Overhead

The sky above this address, right now. Real stars in real positions, computed in your browser from bundled catalogues — constellation figures, proper names, and the planets where they actually are tonight. Nothing is fetched while it runs, so it is correct on a plane, in a basement, or after the internet goes away.

Live demo →Setup Put it on a screen

Overhead night sky panel: a real-time star chart showing constellations, planets, and the Milky Way above the horizon. — Night skyConstellations, planets, and the horizon for your latitude.

Where the sky comes from

A star catalogue bundled into the image, with the astronomy computed in the browser. There is no upstream call at all — not at boot, not ever.

If you self-host

Self-hosted, read-only container, no database and no outbound traffic. It is the cheapest display in the collection to keep alive.

What it wants

A latitude and longitude, and a dark room. Set the location once in the URL and it stays correct for as long as the screen is on.

Setup

Put Overhead on a screen.

A browser is genuinely enough — the Mac app and Fully Kiosk below are conveniences, not requirements.

Any screen

nothing to install

Open the display in whatever browser the screen already has.
Go full screen: F11 on Windows and Linux, ⌃⌘F on macOS.
Or give it a browser of its own, which is what a dedicated panel wants: chrome --kiosk <url> — on macOS, open -a "Google Chrome" --args --kiosk <url>.
Turn off display sleep in the machine’s power settings and walk away.

Mac desktop

LivingKiosk app

Get the app and its install steps at livingkiosk.com/mac. It isn’t notarized yet, so macOS asks you to approve it once.
Menu bar → Library… and pick a display for each screen.
Configure… on any screen for its reload schedule, dim, and saved configs.

See the Mac app →

Wall tablet

via Fully Kiosk

On any Android tablet, install Fully Kiosk Browser.
Settings → Web Content → Start URL: the display’s address.
Under Device Management, keep the screen on and set a dim schedule so it isn’t glaring at 3am.
Turn on Start on Boot so a power blip brings the display back by itself.

fully-kiosk.com →

Displays are ordinary web pages, so anything that can hold one open works: a Raspberry Pi on a monitor, a retired iPad, a Fire tablet, the browser built into a TV.

Configuration

URL parameters.

Everything below, plus a live preview and a URL builder that writes the link for you, is at overhead.livingkiosk.com/setup.

Parameter	Default	Meaning
`lat / lon`	34.05 / -118.24	Observer position. Both required together, or the corner label shows the server default place instead.
`place`	Los Angeles	Override the corner label.
`tz`	America/Los_Angeles	IANA zone for the clock — never the astronomy.
`labels`	on	`off` for a pure sky — no star, constellation or planet names.
`con`	on	`off` for stars only, no stick figures.
`planets`	on	`off` hides the Sun, Moon and planets.
`mag`	twilight-derived	Hard magnitude cutoff, `-2` to `7`.
`proj`	stereographic	`equal-area` for a Lambert azimuthal projection instead.
`dim`	0	Black scrim over everything, `0` to `0.8` (fleet-wide convention).

Overhead is open source under the MIT licence. Run it yourself with one command. The source opens to the public soon.