A star map sells because it is a picture of one specific moment. That is also why it is the recipe most often half-finished: the sky needs a date, a time and a place, and opening only some of them produces a chart of a moment that never happened to anyone.
Build it
Place the sky and set the moment
Add the Star Map element and set a date, a time and a place. Use a moment you know, so an obviously wrong sky would be obvious to you.
Style it before you open anything
Colours, grid, labels, frame. This is the part a customer is buying, and the part that should stay yours.
Open all three inputs
On the Personalization tab, make the date, the time and the place editable together. This is the one recipe where a partial hand-over is worse than none.
Add captions that follow them
Use linked text for the date and the place under the chart so they can never disagree with the sky above them.
Order the questions the way people think
In the customer form dock’s Form view, put the place before the date, or the date before the place, but keep the three together and finish them before anything else.
Why all three or none
Star map or moon phase
Both mark a date, and they suit different products. A star map is a whole sky and reads as a poster from across a room. A moon phase is one object and survives being printed small, on a card or a mug. If your product is small, the moon is usually the better recipe.
Common questions
Can I let shoppers set only the date?
You can, and you should not. The sky depends on all three, so a fixed place puts your city's sky on their date.
What time should the default be?
An evening hour, because that is when people remember a sky. Whatever you choose is what a shopper who changes nothing buys.
The chart looks the same for two different dates.
Check that the dates are far enough apart to move the sky. Two nights in the same week look similar, and that is correct.
Should the caption show the coordinates?
Only if your buyers like that. A place name and a date read better on a gift; coordinates read better on a technical poster.
Does this need any account setup?
No. The place search ships inside Composerie and needs nothing configured.
Next
Read Star Map for the element’s own settings, or Moon Phase for the same idea on a smaller product.