A gift from Edinburgh. The sky above one Edinburgh minute.

Born at the Simpson Centre at the Royal Infirmary; Scottish birth certificates record the time. A proposal on Calton Hill, a wedding on the Royal Mile, a flat in Marchmont or Leith. And the most Edinburgh moment of all: the stroke of midnight at Hogmanay, when the whole city counts down under one sky.

• Hogmanay · 00.00 · the bells and you
• Calton Hill · she said aye

For someone who left Edinburgh: the sky above Arthur's Seat on the Hogmanay they met.

Many of the city's big moments arrive on the clock. Midnight at Hogmanay is the obvious one, and a lot of couples count it as the moment they got together. The One O'Clock Gun from the Castle gives anyone who was nearby an exact time. And Scottish birth certificates carry the time, so a birth is easy to place.

Edinburgh is also a city people pass through: students at the university, Festival workers who came for one August and stayed. For them the first night in a Marchmont flat, or the last night of the Fringe, is the moment that matters.

Use a word only locals would use in the line, a close, a wynd, a stair number, and the picture becomes theirs.

2,819 catalogued galaxies cross the zenith circle at 56.0° north. Five of the larger ones we offer, none of them listed for another city:

• NGC 3780 · 115 million light years · 0.32° off · around 10 pm in early May
• NGC 3264 · 45 million light years · 0.13° off · around 10 pm in mid-April
• UGC 11435 · 179 million light years · 0.03° off · around 10 pm in late August
• NGC 3794 · 66 million light years · 0.25° off · around 10 pm in early May
• NGC 2710 · 123 million light years · 0.25° off · around 10 pm in early March

Each goes to one moment only, so yours is whichever was nearest your minute and still free.

Nearby: Glasgow · Newcastle · Manchester · Leeds.