To generate a star chart, you need to specify your location on the Earth. Click on nearby city to specify the major city nearest you. Select San Francisco, USA from the long list of possible cities. This will display a current map of what the sky looks like from the San Francisco area.
To generate a star chart for your birthday, you have to specify the date. Scroll down from the map to the date and time panel, and select Universal time as the mode for specifying the date. Enter your birthdate (including the year!) and 20:00:00 as the time (20:00:00 UT corresponds to 12 noon Pacific Time). Click the update button above the date and time panel, and the star chart will be updated to show how the sky appeared at noon on your birthday.
The star chart that appears is going to look very crowded. You're probably not interested in a lot of the information displayed, so we want to display only the information of interest. You can customize your display by scrolling down to the display options panel. We only really want to see the constellations, the position of the moon and planets (which will include the Sun), and the ecliptic, which is the path on the sky that the Sun traces over the course of the year. Deselect everything else, and click on the update button again. This will display a map that reflects the choices you just made.
Unfortunately, the Yoursky page doesn't give you the option of easily printing out your star chart, but that's no big deal. First, move the cursor over the image of your star chart and click the right mouse button. Select view image or open image, and this will open a separate page with just your star chart - none of the other stuff. Then choose print from your browser menu. If you have a problem printing the chart, you might want to set your browser to print greyscale instead of color. Hand in this printout as part of your lab.
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