First kiss map: the spot where you kissed, under that night's stars

The short answer

• The spot and the sky on one posterEvery Meridian star map has a small street map of your place with a heart on the exact point, and the stars of that night above it. A doorstep, a park bench, a pier or a viewpoint all work.
• The stars are at 9 pm by the sunThat is 8:44 pm to 10:44 pm on the clock, depending on the city and the season. A first kiss an hour later still has 93% of the same stars over it. The table below goes to five hours.
• After midnight? Print the evening's dateThe 9 pm sky moves about 1 degree from one night to the next, so either date shows nearly the same stars. Pick the date you both say.
• Only remember the month?A week off, the circled star is the same on 87% of nights. Pick a day that means something to you two.

Updated October 29, 2026, by the Meridian studio.

One first kiss, worked through

Hannah and Luis are made-up names; the night is real. After a late dinner on Saturday, July 15, 2017, they walked up to Kerry Park, the viewpoint on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, and kissed there at about 11:30 pm.

• The poster's moment: 10:09 pmIn Seattle in July, 9 pm by the sun is 10:09 pm on the clock. Their kiss came 1 h 21 min later. The sky had turned 20 degrees, and 94% of the stars on the poster were still above them.
• What was overheadThe summer stars: Vega 67 degrees up in the east, Deneb and Altair with it, and Arcturus in the southwest. The Our star design would circle Arcturus, 50 degrees up at the poster's moment and 37 by the time they kissed.
• The street mapThe round map shows the streets of Queen Anne around the park, with the heart on the viewpoint and its coordinates under the date.
• That night's moonIt had not risen yet. See that night in our sky tool.

Kissed late? What the 9 pm poster still shows

First kisses tend to happen at the end of an evening, not at 9. The poster always draws 9 pm by the sun, which in July already falls between 9:28 pm and 10:44 pm in the cities we checked (between 8:44 pm and 9:44 pm in January). So for a summer date the poster is often within an hour or two of the kiss. We measured how much of the sky stays the same as the hours go by.

The poster's own code, 9 US cities (New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Minneapolis, Denver, Los Angeles, Seattle), every 7th night from 2016 to 2025, 4,698 nights. Stars still up: the share of the poster's stars (to magnitude 5.6, as the Our star design draws them) still above the horizon at the kiss. The last two columns are about the star the Our star design circles: whether it is still at least 20 degrees up, and whether the same rule would pick it at the time of the kiss.

Up to three hours later, the circled star is still high on 86% of nights and four out of five stars are the same. After that the sky looks clearly different, and for a kiss near dawn the stars of that evening are the honest choice: the poster then shows the night you spent together, not the minute.

A kiss at midnight on New Year's Eve

Grace and Daniel, also made up, kissed at midnight on Navy Pier in Chicago as 2021 turned into 2022. Their poster is the Our star design in Cream for December 31, 2021.

• The circled star is CapellaWe checked every December 31 from 2016 to 2025 over the same 9 cities: the poster circles Capella every time, 62 to 74 degrees up at its 9 pm. At midnight Capella is still 66 to 77 degrees up, nearly overhead.
• Most of the sky is the same at midnightClock midnight comes 2 h 22 min to 3 h 9 min after the poster's 9 pm, and 82 to 86% of its stars are still up. Over Navy Pier it was 84%, with Capella at 72 degrees.
• December 31 or January 1?The stars at 9 pm on the two dates are about 1 degree apart and the circled star is the same in 100% of the city-years we checked. What changes is the year on the poster. Print the one you say when you tell the story.
• That night's moonA thin crescent that rose before dawn. Look it up in the free sky tool.

December 31, 2025, standard time. The poster's 9 pm is by the sun, so the time to midnight differs from city to city.

Which design for a first kiss

• Under the starsThe sky over the top two thirds, the street map in a circle below it, the coordinates under the date. The best fit when the spot itself matters, like a viewpoint, a porch or a corner. It is the one in our example.
• Our starThe whole sky in a circle, the brightest named star high above you circled and named, and a small street map with the heart under it. The best fit when you want to say which star was above you.
• The whole nightStars over the full sheet, edge to edge, with the street map in the middle where the point overhead would be.
• Only the streets, in a heartIf the place is the story and the stars are not, our heart map of where you met draws the streets inside a heart. For the first date itself, see first date maps.

Sizes and prices

Each size and frame carries the same poster. The 12 × 16 in sits on a nightstand or a desk, the 18 × 24 in fits a bedroom wall, the 24 × 32 in goes over a bed or a sofa.

Shipping is free in the US. Launch prices until Nov 30. More frames, and the price of every size and frame, are in the editor before you pay.

Returns

A poster with a name that arrived as ordered is not taken back. Damaged or printed wrong: email a photo within 30 days of delivery and we reprint or refund in full. See returns.

More for couples

• Star map of the night we met
• Valentine's Day star map
• Engagement star map
• Star map gift ideas
• See the sky on any date, free
• Are star maps accurate?