асман · the sky over Talas, 42.5° north · star names, plates, a planisphere
A planisphere for Talas: the star disc turns under a window cut for our latitude. Pick a date and an hour, or grab the disc and turn it.
The disc is the whole sky that ever rises over Talas, with Irad (the pole star) nailed in the middle. The window is the sky you can see: its gold edge is the horizon, the cross is straight overhead. Turn the disc until the date on its edge sits against the hour on the outside ring. The hours are Irad time, so midnight on the ring is not under the pole: our clocks are an hour and twelve minutes ahead of the sun.
Hold it over your head with TÜSHTÜK at the bottom and face south. Then the sky and the disc match. East is on the left because you are looking up, not down. Everyone gets this wrong once.
It knows about 250 bright stars, the Milky Way, the ecliptic (the dashed line, where the Sun, Moon and planets walk), and where the Sun and the Moon are, with the Moon's phase, to about a degree. It doesn't know the planets: they wander, that's what the word means. If you see a bright star on the dashed line that isn't on the disc, it's Jupiter or Saturn, or Cholpon.
Made with a canvas and some spherical trigonometry from my second-year course (thank you, Prof. who-I-won't-name, you were right, I did need it).
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