Expert: Courtney Seligman - 5/19/2010

Question
I am designing a scarf for a small charity called "Afghan Hands" to benefit tribal woman in Afghanistan. The woman recieve a stipend for going to school in the morning and are also paid for embroidery work they sew on cashmere scarves and shawls that are sold in the USA. All charity profits go to the women.
I am wondering where I could find images of constellations seen in New York City and Afghanistan when looking at the night sky on the same night on any one day. (I understand the time zones are very different), The idea is to have each view of the sky embroidered on the two far ends of the scarf so that when it is worn, both sky views will be seen together. If they are similar, that's okay.  I don't really care what time of the year, although probably seeing the big dipper would be good because it is so familiar to people.
How could I find images to use as rerferencs?  Thank you so much! Sincerly, Carla Danes (LA, CA)

Answer
I think that what you want can be found at http://www.astroviewer.com/

The site allows you to specify any of a number of U.S. and international cities, and you can also specify any latitude and longitude, as well as any date and time. Afghanistan is a little south of New York, so the view of the sky would be slightly different; but you could choose an intermediate latitude, if you wanted the view to be the same (longitude doesn't affect the results).

The one problem I see with that site is that there doesn't seem to be any way to show the view in a particular direction -- just an overall "dome of the sky" view. If you want individual constellation maps, you can find them on Wikipedia, or on my website (http://cseligman.com/text/atlas.htm), but if you want, say, a view of the northern horizon from a particular location, you'd need a different site.

If I had more time, I'd be happy to look up some suitable sites for you, but I'm giving a final in a couple of hours, and have to get ready for that; so this is all I have time for, for now. If you'd like a follow-up, just resend your request, sometime later this evening.