Astroscopus guttatus or the northern stargazer is a fish belonging to the Uranoscopidae family and was first described by Charles Conrad Abbott in 1860.

[2][3] Members of the Uranoscopidae family are characterized by dorsally or dorsolaterally directed eyes placed on or near the top of a large, flattened cuboid head, an oblique to vertical mouth often lined with cutaneous cirri, and an elongated, sub-compressed body.

In most fish species the lateral line follows a straight direction or gentle curve on the side of the body.

The mouth of the stargazer faces up so that it can ambush prey while hiding in the sandy bottoms of coastal bodies of water.

In addition to placement of their mouth, Astroscopus fish can breathe when the water is full of sand or when buried due to a row of fine comb-like structures on the edge of each jaw.

These comb-like serrations are position in a way that when the jaw is closed, they interlock allowing water to flow through but preventing sand.

The electric apparatus is composed of two organs, which form two vertical columns roughly oval in horizontal section and placed behind and somewhat under each eye.

The organ is believed to not only be used to threaten predators from above as the fish lies buried in the sand, but to also stun prey.

Stargazers lay small, transparent eggs on the bottoms of bays in the late spring early summer.

After approximately one month, the fish will slowly grow a dark coloring and develop the electrical organs from eye muscles when they are 12–15 mm (0.5–0.6 in).

[6] As a juvenile, the northern stargazer travels in schools as it leaves the shoreline during the winter to avoid the serve cold only returning to the bay in the spring.

After four to six years the fish has grown to 12–13 inches in length and them migrates to the sandy bottoms some distance off the coast where it lives permanently.

This is also when the fish becomes reproductively active releasing eggs and sperm in the early spring and breeding around May or June.