✦ Which star is the Sun near today? Write it a postcard
As the Sun moves around the zodiac it passes real stars, one after another. Umbriel's free Postcard to the Star finds the fixed star the Sun is nearest today, from a catalogue of 277, and shows exactly how far away it is. You write that star one sentence on a postcard with a dated stamp. Over a year your postcards trace the Sun's walk around the sky.
- What you'll needOne sentence; no chart and no account
- What you getToday's nearest fixed star with its constellation, brightness and distance from the Sun in degrees, a postcard for one sentence, and a ring of the year's stars with a postcard at each one you wrote to, printable as one plate
- CostFree, no account required
14160+ people cast their chart here in the last 30 days.
What it is
The Sun spends the year walking a fixed path through the stars. We cannot see them while it passes, because it is daytime, but they are there, and each has a name that is often thousands of years old. Postcard to the Star tells you which one the Sun is beside today.
Deeper.a cup-of-tea read
The card names the star, gives its Bayer letter and constellation, its brightness, and how far it is from the Sun along the zodiac in degrees, along with how far it sits above or below the Sun's path. When the Sun is within a fifth of a degree, the card says it is on it. Some stars carry a line from astrological tradition, written for Umbriel and labelled as such; for the rest the card gives the plain facts and invents nothing.
Then you write the star one sentence, on a postcard with a dated stamp. It can be anything: a question, a thank-you, the weather. It is kept, not posted.
The year object is the walk around the ecliptic: a ring with all 277 stars on it and a postcard at each one you wrote to. A star the Sun passed with no postcard is a small tick on the ring, nothing more. From the second year on, last year's postcard to a star sits beside this year's, so you can read what you said to Regulus a year ago.
A star gets one postcard a year, and writing again changes it. Nothing counts, nothing is owed, and it works for someone who opens it only on Sundays.
Your postcards stay private, on your device, and if you sign in they sync end to end encrypted, the same way the journal does. Nothing is posted.
How Umbriel computes it
Deeper.a cup-of-tea read
The Sun's position is the engine's apparent longitude for today, the same calculation the live sky uses. The 277 stars are the engine's own fixed-star catalogue, each moved from its catalogue epoch to today by precession at 50.29 arcseconds a year. The distance on the card is the real difference in ecliptic longitude between the Sun and the star, and the star's distance above or below the Sun's path is its ecliptic latitude, worked from the star's own right ascension and declination. Every star position was cross-checked between two independent catalogues to within 12 arcminutes, so a separation under a fifth of a degree is shown as the Sun being on the star rather than as a number finer than the data supports. The two lines about each star are built from the catalogue itself: its Bayer letter and constellation, its magnitude, where it sits today and how far it is off the Sun's path. A sentence from astrological tradition exists for 37 of the 277, is shown under a label saying it was written for Umbriel, and is left out rather than invented for the other 240. A postcard is filed under its star and its year.
What's in your result
Deeper.a one-breath read
- Today's starThe fixed star nearest the Sun along the zodiac, from 277.
- The real distanceDegrees from the Sun along the zodiac, and how far off its path.
- The star's factsBayer letter, constellation and brightness; a tradition line only where one is written and labelled.
- A postcardOne sentence, with a dated stamp.
- The year's ringEvery star on the Sun's walk, a postcard at each one you wrote to.
Common questions
Which star is the Sun near today?
It changes every few days as the Sun moves about a degree a day. The card names it, with its distance from the Sun in degrees.
What are fixed stars in astrology?
The ordinary stars, called fixed because they keep their places relative to each other while the planets wander. Astrology has long given weight to a planet or angle sitting on a bright one, such as Regulus, Spica or Antares.
Why do the stars' positions change over time?
Precession: the Earth's axis wobbles slowly, so every star's zodiac position creeps forward by about a degree every 72 years. Umbriel moves each star to today's date before measuring.
How accurate is the distance?
Every star position was cross-checked between two independent catalogues to within 12 arcminutes, a fifth of a degree, and the card counts anything closer than that as the Sun being on the star.
Can I see the star?
Not today: the Sun is beside it, so it is up in daylight. It returns to the night sky some months later, on the opposite side of the year.
Is Postcard to the Star free?
Yes: the day's star, the postcard and the printable ring, with no account. Your postcards stay on your own devices.
Do I need an account or an email address?
No. There is no sign-up, no email capture and no free trial. Enter your details and the result is drawn in your own browser.
Go deeper
Each of these is a free tool in its own right.
Next doorThe Sky on a Day You RememberMost places want your birth data before they show you anything. Umbriel's free Moment Machine wants a moment: a date, or a plain phrase like "yesterday at 3pm". It draws that sky, says three specific things about it, and tells you exactly how sure it is.Prints in the head of this page, all public domain except where stated: the celestial planisphere or transparent star director, c. 1850, Wellcome Collection; a chart of the constellations of the Great Bear and the Little Bear, engraving, Wellcome Collection; Johannes Hevelius, Machina coelestis, Danzig, 1673, Observatoire de Paris copy via Gallica (BnF). Ground: after Claudius Ptolemy, Ulm, 1482, Wikimedia Commons.
Further down the page: a chart of the constellation Orion, engraving, Wellcome Collection. The next-door print comes from that page's own head. The pointing hand: a pointing hand, after a medieval manuscript margin (line art by Jerimee).
Umbriel offers every system here as a set of prompts to think with, never as a statement of fact about who you are. Take what's useful, leave the rest.
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