A gift from Manchester. The sky above one Manchester night.

Born at St Mary's on Oxford Road. A first date in the Northern Quarter, a proposal in the Midland Hotel, where Rolls first met Royce. A terrace in Chorlton, a flat in Ancoats, a semi in Didsbury. And the afternoons at Old Trafford or the Etihad that a family never stops talking about.

• St Mary's · 11.05 pm · our little Manc
• Northern Quarter · first date · 2019

For a Mancunian who moved south: the sky above the house they grew up in, on the day they were born.

Mancunians are loyal to their bits of the city, and a present that names the right one lands well: Chorlton is not Didsbury, and Salford will tell you it is not Manchester at all. Use the neighbourhood in the line rather than the city name, and it reads as if a local chose it.

Football matters here more than almost anywhere, and some of the best moments for this present are on a matchday: the first game a dad took his daughter to, a derby win, the afternoon a season was decided. Use the kick-off time and the ground; the line can be as partisan as you like.

For a quieter present, the gig at the Apollo where two people met, or the first night in a Victorian terrace in Levenshulme, framed for the hall.

2,760 catalogued galaxies cross the zenith circle at 53.5° north. Five of the larger ones we offer, none of them listed for another city:

• M109 (NGC 3992) · 50 million light years · 0.11° off · around 10 pm in early May
• NGC 3631 · 56 million light years · 0.31° off · around 10 pm in late April
• NGC 3549 · 136 million light years · 0.09° off · around 10 pm in late April
• UGC 3273 · 30 million light years · 0.07° off · around 10 pm in mid-January
• NGC 5474 · 12 million light years · 0.18° off · around 10 pm in early June

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

Nearby: Leeds · Birmingham · Newcastle · Cardiff.