For Educators
Universe Finder lets students fly through more than a hundred thousand real stars and thousands of galaxies, nebulae and clusters, all placed from published astronomical catalogues. It runs in any modern browser — laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, or a single projector screen — and works well as a 10–15 minute anchor activity for lessons on scale, light, and the structure of the universe.
🚀 Launch classroom exploration →
A ready 15-minute activity: “Riding the light”
Big idea: when we look into space, we look back in time. Every distance in Universe Finder is a travel time for light.
- Orient (3 min). Open the map. Drag to look around, scroll to fly. Find the Sun and Earth — everything starts from home.
- The nearest bright star (4 min). Search for Sirius — 8.6 light-years away. Ask: what were you doing when the light you're seeing left Sirius?
- Deeper in time (4 min). Fly to Betelgeuse (about 500 light-years — its light left before the telescope was invented) and the Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery.
- Out of the galaxy (3 min). End at the Andromeda Galaxy — 2.5 million light-years. The light arriving today left before humans existed.
- Discuss (1 min). If a star 500 light-years away exploded today, when would we know?
Each link above flies the map straight to that object, so the whole activity can be run as four clicks on a projector. The printable activity sheet below follows the same route.
Guided missions
The app's built-in missions work as self-paced tasks: each is a short goal with progress tracked on the device. Good classroom fits include Tour the planets (all eight, ordered scale of the Solar System), The five brightest stars, Explore Orion, A star's life and death (nebula → supernova remnant), Earth to Andromeda (the scale ladder in one flight), and Visit five rocky worlds (exoplanets). Students open them from the 🚀 missions panel in the app; progress needs no account and stays on their device.
Age & level recommendations
- Ages 8–11: free exploration plus Tour the planets. Focus on "which is bigger / which is farther" using the built-in size comparisons.
- Ages 11–14: the "Riding the light" activity above; light-years as travel time; The five brightest stars and Explore Orion missions.
- Ages 14+: stellar life cycles (nebula → supergiant → remnant), the distance ladder, and exoplanets in 🪐 Worlds — including how transit detection works in the weekly Planet Hunter challenge. For a memorable perspective lesson, open any bright star and choose 👽 See the sky from here: the constellation figures bend during the flight and the Sun becomes an ordinary star in the alien sky. Comparing the sky from two or three different stars makes a strong short assignment.
No accounts, no sign-ins
No accounts are required, and Cosmic Passport progress stays on the student's device — there is nothing to sign into and no personal details are asked for. Analytics and advertising load only after consent: the cookie banner can be dismissed with essential-only cookies, in which case neither loads. Live data reaches the app only through our own server. Full details are in the Privacy Policy.
Where the data comes from
Positions and distances come from the HYG stellar database (built on Hipparcos, Yale and Gliese), deep-sky objects from the Messier, NGC and IC catalogues, imagery and object data from NASA, the Space Telescope Science Institute (MAST) and SIMBAD/CDS, and live feeds from NASA's Exoplanet Archive and near-Earth-object service. Positions are best-known estimates, not exact — which is itself worth a classroom conversation. Full attributions: References & Credits.
Printable activity sheet
The “Riding the light” activity sheet is a one-page worksheet matching the activity above — name/date header, one task per stop, and three discussion questions. Open it and print straight from the browser (it's formatted for A4/Letter, black on white).
Questions or suggestions
If you use Universe Finder in a classroom, we'd love to hear what worked: contact@universefinder.com.