Use Cases | TheStarDB

Your Universe

Personal Viewing & Learning

Explore the night sky whenever curiosity strikes.

Not every visit needs a reason. Open TheStarDB on a quiet evening and follow whatever catches your eye: a nebula, a nearby star, a black hole you have only ever read about. No telescope, no astronomy background, and no account required to start looking.

Browse 33M+ real cataloged objects with nothing to install
Save favorites to a personal bookmark list and Star Diary
Jump from a plain language description to the full technical data
Pick up right where you left off, on any device

Start Exploring Free →

Classroom Mode

Educators & Students

Bring astrophysics to life in the classroom.

Abstract concepts become concrete when students can interact with actual stellar data. Show stellar evolution by loading a main-sequence star, then a red giant, then a white dwarf all rendered accurately in real time.

Visualize the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram with live renders for each star class
Compare spectral classes side-by-side see why Rigel is blue and Betelgeuse is red
Demonstrate black hole physics without specialized software or hardware
Embed the STEN viewer directly into your course website or LMS

View Education Plans →

Exhibit Display

Observatories & Planetariums

Kiosk-ready, embed-ready, exhibit-ready.

TheStarDB's STEN viewer is designed to run continuously on touchscreen kiosks and exhibit displays. No app store. No install. Just open a browser Chrome, Firefox, Safari and it runs.

Full-screen Explorer mode with no distracting UI chrome
URL-driven object loading: /explorer.html?obj=Sgr+A*
Institutional plans include SLA, custom branding options, and API access
Link specific stars to your printed exhibits via QR codes

Talk to our team →

Tonight's Sky

Amateur Astronomers

Look up any object you can see tonight.

You see a bright point of light in Orion. With TheStarDB, you can look it up in seconds, see exactly what it looks like physically, and learn everything about it its temperature, distance, mass, and spectral class.

Search 33M+ objects by name, constellation, or Bayer designation
Filter by magnitude to find what is visible to the naked eye tonight
Discover which stars host confirmed exoplanets
Save favorites to your personal bookmark list

Create a free account →

Name a Star

Gifts & Memorials

Give someone a piece of the real universe.

A real, individually cataloged star, registered with a name that matters to you, and a dedication message attached to it permanently. For an anniversary, a birthday, or in memory of someone, it is a gift that stays searchable and alive in the catalog long after the occasion.

Choose a real star from the catalog and register a name for it
Add a personal dedication for anniversaries, memorials, or milestones
Every naming includes a certificate and a permanent, searchable star page
Delivered instantly as a digital gift, or as a printed keepsake

Gift a Star →

Live Renders

Creators & Streamers

Real astrophysics, rendered live, ready for your channel.

Every object in STEN is computed fresh on the GPU, frame by frame, not a looping animation. That makes it a genuine source of background footage and B roll: a black hole, a pulsar, or a slow drift through a star field, captured live instead of pulled from stock libraries.

Capture footage of any of STEN's 33M+ objects in real time
Loop a black hole, pulsar, or star field as ambient background
Real physics computed per frame, so it never looks repetitive
Licensing available for commercial use in videos, streams, and broadcasts

See Licensing Options →

Real Settings

Writers & World Builders

Ground your fiction in a real, physical universe.

Pick a real star system for your setting instead of inventing one, then pull its actual distance, mass, and spectral class. See what a sky would really look like from a planet orbiting that star, and let real physics inform the details your readers will notice.

Pull the exact distance, mass, and spectral class for any real star
See what your characters would actually see from orbit around it
Search by spectral type to find a star that fits the scene you are writing
Use real black holes, pulsars, and exoplanets as grounded inspiration

Start Researching →

REST API

Developers & Researchers

Query 33M+ stellar objects: stars, quasars, exoplanets, and more. Clean JSON. No fuss.

The TheStarDB REST API gives you full access to every object in the catalog. Filter, paginate, sort. Get full physical parameters in one call. Build your own astronomy tools on top of the most comprehensive open stellar database on the web.

Filter by spectral class, magnitude, distance, constellation, or type
Real ATNF period data for every pulsar in the catalog
NASA Exoplanet Archive data included for all exoplanet hosts
Consistent JSON schema, versioned endpoints, generous rate limits

# Search all named G-type stars within 100 light years
GET https://thestardb.org/api/v1/stars
  ?stellar_class=G&is_named=true&max_dist_ly=100

# Response
{
  "count": 14,
  "stars": [
    { "name": "Sol", "spectral_class": "G2V",
      "temperature": 5778, "dist_ly": 0.000016 },
    { "name": "Tau Ceti", "spectral_class": "G8.5V",
      "temperature": 5344, "dist_ly": 11.9 },
    ...
  ]
}

Full API docs →

Why TheStarDB

The difference is in the rendering.

Most databases give you a table of numbers. TheStarDB gives you the star itself something students can actually see and react to.

High School Astronomy Teacher

Texas, USA

The API is genuinely the cleanest stellar data API I have worked with. Schema is consistent, pagination works, and the physical parameters are complete.

Independent Developer

Building a sky chart app

We run the Explorer in full-screen mode on two kiosks in our hall of astronomy. Visitors spend more time on those than any other exhibit.

Science Museum Curator

Pacific Northwest

Built for everyone who looks up.