Timeplain curiosities · Just for fun
A little time travel for your captain’s log. Choose a date to calculate a stardate inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation. This is a fan convention, not an official conversion of the show’s dates.
Star Trek: The Next Generation-style stardate
41000.00
For January 1, 2364 at 00:00 UTC.
How this calculation works
We assign 1,000 stardate units to each UTC calendar year, with January 1, 2323 as zero. January 1, 2364 therefore becomes 41000.00. The fraction of the year that has elapsed supplies the remaining units.
stardate = (year − 2323 + fraction of year elapsed) × 1000The year fraction uses the actual number of days: 365 or 366. Halfway through leap year 2364, on July 2 at 00:00 UTC, the result is 41500.00. Results are rounded to two decimal places; those decimals do not imply that the fictional system is this precise.
Why is today’s stardate negative?
Today is before the chosen year-zero of 2323. For example, January 1, 2026 becomes −297000.00. We keep the actual Earth year instead of silently adding centuries to make the result look like a television captain’s log.
Is this the system used in Star Trek?
It is a mathematical interpretation inspired by the Next Generation era, which also includes Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It is not a formula that reliably reproduces every on-screen stardate. Other fan calculators can use different starting points or year lengths and give different answers. The Original Series used a different, inconsistent numbering scheme; this page does not calculate Original Series stardates.
Explore TrekTerest’s explanation of fan stardate conventions. For real-world dates and timestamps, use the Unix timestamp converter.