Star Names
Two minutes on the clock. Pick the right name for each highlighted star. Wrong answers cost time. The brightest stars come up most.
What you'll do
A star is highlighted on a chart; you pick its proper name from four options. Or you're given a name and have to pick which of four chart regions shows it. Each correct answer is one point. Wrong answers cost five seconds. The clock runs for 120 seconds. The clock is the score.
What it trains
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Bright-star vocabulary — Sirius, Vega, Arcturus, Capella, Betelgeuse and the rest of the ~80–90 named naked-eye stars.
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Constellation geography — which star sits where in which pattern. Memory by name plus position.
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Speed of recall — under a clock, with a penalty. The same recall speed you need when you're talking somebody through a sky tour.
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Pattern recognition — reading a star field on a chart and locking onto the right asterism fast.
How to prepare
1. Use the study mode first. The Star Names exam tests the same pool without a timer. Get comfortable knowing them before you put a clock on yourself.
2. Visit the stars on the map. Open the interactive star map, click each bright star, read its detail page. Names stick faster when you've seen the star in context — brightness, colour, distance, neighbours.
3. Anchor on the alphas. The drill weights toward alpha and beta of each constellation. If you know those cold, you're already winning rounds.
4. Pick your hemisphere. The northern drill stays above Dec −20°, the southern below +20° (with overlap around the equator). Pick the version that matches the sky you actually look at.
How to play
- Round length: 120 seconds.
- Right answer: +1 point.
- Wrong answer: −5 seconds off the clock.
- 50/50 joker: spend 10 seconds to remove two wrong answers. One use per round, disabled when fewer than 10 seconds remain.
- Final score: correct answers + remaining seconds. Push for both.
- Leaderboard: top 10 per hemisphere. You need to be logged in for your score to count.
Tips
- Don't burn the joker early. Save it for a question you genuinely don't recognise — the 10-second cost is brutal otherwise.
- Read the chart, not the options. If you spot the star instantly, the four buttons are noise.
- When in doubt, eliminate. Even without the joker, ruling out two wrong names usually leaves an obvious choice.
- Replay the same hemisphere five times in a row — the same pool means the brightest stars come up repeatedly. That's the point.
Leaderboard
Top scores are tracked separately for the northern and southern drills. Anonymous plays don't appear on the board — log in to record your run.
Same time penalty for everyone. Same star pool. The fastest, most accurate brain wins.
Two minutes. How many can you name?
