Make a star wheel
A star wheel is a map of the sky that turns. Print the two pages, a grown-up cuts them out, and you join them in the middle. Turn the star disc until tonight's date lines up with the time, and the window shows the stars that are up right now.
Tonight, Nov 11, at 9 pm
How to make it
- Print both pages. Glue them to thin card (a cereal box works) if you can.
- ✂️ A grown-up cuts out the star disc around its outside circle, and the holder around its outside circle.
- ✂️ A grown-up cuts out the holder's window along the dashed line. The window is the sky.
- Put the star disc behind the holder, stars facing you. A grown-up pushes a paper fastener through both centre dots, so the disc turns.
How to use it
- Turn the disc until tonight's date, on the outside edge, sits next to the time on the holder.
- From March to early November, clocks are an hour ahead (daylight saving time): for 10 pm, line up 9 pm.
- Go out with a grown-up. Face south and hold the wheel up in front of you, with the S at the bottom. The stars near the bottom of the window are low in the south.
- Facing north? Turn the whole wheel upside down so the N is at the bottom. The same goes for east and west.
- The middle of the window is straight overhead. The middle of the disc, near Polaris, is the North Star.
Try it on 15 December at 9 pm: Orion has risen in the south-east, with Taurus and the Pleiades high above it, Gemini in the east, Cassiopeia high in the north-west and the Great Square in the south-west. The wheel is drawn for 40° north, the latitude of Denver, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Philadelphia; from the far north or south of the US, stars near the window's edge sit a little higher or lower than drawn.
Star wheel: the star disc
✂️ A grown-up cuts round the outside circle. The dashed circle shows where the holder sits; the dates stay outside it.
Star wheel: the holder
✂️ A grown-up cuts round the outside circle, then cuts out the window on the dashed line. Join the two at the centre dots with a paper fastener.
What's on it
The brightest stars the US can see and the stars of every star pattern on Peabody, placed from their real positions, with bigger dots for brighter stars. Planets and the Moon move, so a star wheel can't show them: Sky Tonight tells you where they are. Learn the shapes first on the star pattern pages, then find them with the wheel.
“Sailors found their way by the stars for thousands of years. A star wheel is how they learned them.”