Sizes and Pricing
Basic print
11 × 14, $39
16 × 20, $49
Drymount print*
11 × 14, $49
16 × 20, $59
Framed 11 × 14 print – black or blue
Museum metal frame, $89
Traditional wood frame, $99
Framed 16 × 20 print – black or blue
Museum metal frame, $109
Traditional wood frame, $119
* Drymount = print mounted to stiff 3/16” foamcore. This makes it sturdy and easy to frame yourself.
Production & Delivery Time
Prints and drymounts ship on the 3rd business day following order day. For example, orders on Monday ship Thursday; orders on Friday, Saturday or Sunday ship Wednesday.
Framed prints ship on the 8th business day. Sorry, no rush is available for framed prints – they must air-dry for 7 days before framing. A PDF of or your framed print is available on the 3rd day following order – it makes a nice gift card.
In a hurry? Rush service is available for prints and drymounts. Order by noon ET for same-day shipping, M–F. $10 additional + your choice of shipping upgrade. Please call 866-565-4500 to flag your order.
Your Night Sky
A local view is rendered for the latitude and longitude of your location, on the date you specify. Any date, any location.
We pick the view, 140° across by about 80° above the horizon, that we think is the prettiest, or most interesting, over the 24 hour day, with preference to the evening view (between sundown and midnight). We’ll include the moon (if visible), in its correct phase and position, stars down to the 5th magnitude of brightness, and whatever planets were visible. We’ll show the part of the sky we feel is prettiest, most interesting or compelling. Occasionally we’ll pick a view after midnight on the following date if our intuition takes us there.
Several days each month the moon rises and sets with the sun; no moon will show in prints for these days.
A seperate, detailed starmap is included with each print, naming the constellations, planets and stars shown in the print.
Horizon
The horizon is the visual anchor of the print. We have a variety to choose from, but suggest that our simple treelines – summer, fall, winter or tropcal – are the best compliment to the print. These offer a beautiful frame to the night sky, yet allow the emphsis to be on moon, stars, descriptive text, and sentiment.
The print is about the night sky. the true sky, rendered for your date, with our astronomer’s comments. We always caution people not to be too focused on getting the exact literal horizon illustration… think of the print more as an image from a memory or dream rather than a photograph.
You can view all the horizon illustrations in the interactive builder on the shop page.
We have a blog entry about creating horizons from your photograph, or from digital stock, if you’re interested. This process can take a few extra weeks.
Headline
The headline, by convention, reads “Night Sky over [Your Location]”. This works well.
A few variations we like include “Our Wedding Night Sky,” or ’Under a [Late Summer, December, June, etc] Sky".
A child’s print could read: “David’s First Starry Night.”
Any 3 to 7 words will work. We strongly suggest NOT adding the state. This is redundant information (you or the recipient know the state, right?) and punctuation looks bad in headlines. Trust us on this.
Message
The Message can be up to two sentences, but one short sentence perhaps up to ten words works best visually. We’ve put together a lot of occasion specific ideas – browse them on the Examples page. Choose from one of these standards, or create your own.
If you don’t add a message we’ll just print the day and date beneath the headline.
We can move the day and date to the caption by special request, leaving just the headline in the white area beneath the night sky image. Let us know in the special instructions on the cart page.
Caption
The caption is a short – two to three sentence – description of the sky shown in the print.
We typically comment on some or all of the following: the phase and constellation of the moon, visible planets, interesting conjunctions (close pairing or groupings of celestial objects) asterisms (star patterns that are not recognized constellations) and bright stars. A comet, eclipse or rare grouping (such as the five planet line-up in the spring of 2002) would take the entire comment.
Here is a typical caption line from late February of 2009:
Nightfall. A crescent moon stands low in the west with radiant Venus, the ‘Evening Star,’ a close and beautiful pairing in faint Pisces. Orion shows above. Sirius and Canopus, night’s two brightest stars, shine together south.
Framing
You can’t really go wrong with any of these choices. Blue or black, contemporary museum metal or traditional wood.
These represent the best solutions we’ve found to date: the colors work exceptionally well; the profiles are of the highest quality. We frame to the same standards as a ‘custom’ shop, with spacers to isolate the print, real glass, stainless hardware, bumpers, and heavy black craft-paper backing on the wood frames.
We mount the starmap in a clear sleeve on the back of each framed print as well
The museum metal frames trend toward contemporary. Glossy, clean, smooth, and sharp. The wooden frames lean toward traditional. They have satin finishes, a little more weight, and formality.
The blue wooden frame is a beautiful match with the sky color. It’s quietly elegant, very romantic and unabashed. The black, with it’s lovely pewter accent – drawing from the font color – is beautifully understated and especially nice as a wedding present.
A nice preview of the frames, with your horizon illustration, is shown on the build/order page. Use the size drop-down menu to see the choices.
View our in-home gallery of framed prints