I’m very excited to share a new little project I’ve been working on: Starplot Glasgow.

It’s a web app that lets you generate star plots of the night sky as seen from Glasgow. You can choose the date, time, and plot type, then sit back and enjoy a colourful map of the stars overhead. Thanks to a recent update to the Starplot library (huge thanks to Elanor for adding gradient backgrounds – they really make the charts pop), the plots now have a lovely twilight effect too.

Here’s what it looks like in action:

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Why I made it

The short answer: because I love stargazing!

I’ve always found something magical about the night sky. Even though light pollution makes it tricky to see everything from the city, plotting the constellations digitally still gives that feeling of connection to the cosmos. I wanted to build a simple way for anyone to explore what’s above their heads in Glasgow on any given night.

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Under the hood

A little bit of tech detail for those curious:

• The entire application is built in Python 3.13, making heavy use of the Starplot library.
• The front end is built with Streamlit, which made it quick to put together an interactive interface.
• It’s hosted on Render (on their free tier), which means anyone can hop on and use it straight from the browser.

The whole thing is open source, and you can find the code here:
https://github.com/bprobert97/starplot-glasgow

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Get involved

I’d love to see this project grow, and contributions are more than welcome. Whether it’s speeding things up, adding more customisation, or experimenting with new ways to visualise the data, there’s lots of potential.

And of course, if you’re not a developer but just love stars, please do try out the app and see what the Glasgow sky looks like on your chosen night.

👉 Try Starplot Glasgow here

Clear skies! 🌌