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Stars

GET /v1/stars — Look up fixed star positions from the Swiss Ephemeris catalog.

Stars

Look up ecliptic positions of fixed stars from the Swiss Ephemeris sefstars.txt catalog.

Text
GET  /v1/stars
POST /v1/stars

Credit cost: 1 (single star), 5 (all stars)

Parameters

ParameterTypeRequiredDefaultDescription
datetimestringOne of datetime or jdISO 8601 UTC datetime
jdnumberOne of datetime or jdJulian Day in UT1
starstringYesStar name (e.g., "Aldebaran", "alTau") or "all"

Response

Single star

JSON
{
  "data": {
    "name": "Aldebaran",
    "bayer": "alTau",
    "longitude": 69.9471,
    "latitude": -5.4674,
    "distance": 20.43,
    "magnitude": 0.85,
    "spectral": "K5III"
  },
  "meta": { "..." }
}

All stars (star=all)

JSON
{
  "data": [
    { "name": "Aldebaran", "bayer": "alTau", "..." },
    { "name": "Regulus", "bayer": "alLeo", "..." }
  ],
  "meta": { "credits_used": 5, "..." }
}
FieldTypeDescription
namestringCommon name
bayerstringBayer designation (e.g., "alTau")
longitudenumberEcliptic longitude in degrees
latitudenumberEcliptic latitude in degrees
distancenumberDistance in AU (if known)
magnitudenumberVisual magnitude
spectralstringSpectral classification

Examples

Bash
curl "https://api.morphemeris.com/v1/stars?datetime=2024-03-20T12:00:00Z&star=Aldebaran" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer morphemeris_live_YOUR_KEY"
javascript
const res = await fetch(
  "https://api.morphemeris.com/v1/stars?datetime=2024-03-20T12:00:00Z&star=Aldebaran",
  { headers: { Authorization: "Bearer morphemeris_live_YOUR_KEY" } }
);
const data = await res.json();
Python
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.morphemeris.com/v1/stars",
    params={"datetime": "2024-03-20T12:00:00Z", "star": "Aldebaran"},
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer morphemeris_live_YOUR_KEY"},
)
data = res.json()

Stars can be looked up by common name ("Aldebaran") or Bayer designation ("alTau"). Names are case-insensitive.