About Night Sky Tonight
Step outside, look up, and know what you are looking at. For your location and night this works out which planets are up, when each one rises, reaches its highest point and sets, and exactly where to look as a compass bearing and an altitude you can measure with your fist. Alongside that: the Moon’s phase and its rise and set, the brightest stars and constellations overhead, the hourly cloud forecast, and when the sky is properly dark.
The all-sky chart is the real sky, not an illustration. Every one of its 921 stars, every constellation line and every planet is placed from its computed altitude and azimuth for the minute on the slider, so moving the slider turns the sky as the Earth does. Turn it to face the direction you are facing and it matches what is in front of you.
Planet and Moon positions come from the open-source astronomy-engine library, checked before release against the US Naval Observatory: 1,600 rise and set times across three continents agreed to within a minute. Nothing about your location is stored.
Hold the chart up with the direction you face at the bottom. The edge is the horizon, the centre is straight overhead, and the dashed rings are 30° and 60° up. Stars to magnitude 4.5, positions recomputed for the minute shown.
“Visible” means at least 10° up while the Sun is more than 6° below the horizon. Uranus needs binoculars and a dark sky; Neptune needs a telescope. Rise and set times are for a flat, clear horizon.
Oppositions, the best elevations of Mercury and Venus, close planetary pairings, eclipses and meteor-shower peaks, worked out for this location.
Working it out…
Turns the whole page deep red on black. Rod cells in your eyes barely respond to red light, so you can read the chart without undoing twenty minutes of dark adaptation.
A black-on-white chart for the time on the slider, with the planet table and the place and time printed on it — for a clipboard and a red torch.
How to Use Night Sky Tonight
The tool starts from your approximate location, taken from your connection. Press Change to search anywhere — a dark-sky park two hours away is worth checking before you drive — or Use device location for a precise fix. The hero line names the planets worth going out for; the table beneath gives each one’s rise, highest point and set in the location’s own time zone. Drag the slider through the night and the chart and the “up now” lists follow it. Facing south is the classic view from the northern hemisphere, where the planets and the Moon parade across; from the southern hemisphere, face north.
Finding Things With Altitude and Bearing
Every position here is two numbers. The bearing (azimuth) is a compass direction: 0° north, 90° east, 180° south, 270° west. The altitude is the angle above the horizon. You carry a surprisingly good protractor on the end of your arm:
- A fist at arm’s length spans about 10°.
- The tip of your index finger covers about 1° — twice the width of the full Moon.
- An outstretched hand, thumb to little finger, spans about 20–25°.
So “Jupiter, 34° SE” means face south-east and count three and a half fists up from the horizon. Anything under about 10° is fighting haze, streetlights and trees, which is why the planet list treats 10° as the line for “visible”.
Why the Planets Come and Go
Mercury and Venus orbit inside Earth’s orbit, so from here they never get far from the Sun: Mercury no more than about 28°, Venus about 47°. They are evening stars low in the west after sunset or morning stars in the east before dawn, and they are best at greatest elongation. The outer planets are best at opposition, when Earth passes between them and the Sun: they rise at sunset, are highest around midnight, are closest and brightest, and are up all night. Mars reaches opposition only about every 26 months, which is why it can be dazzling one year and unremarkable the next.
Twilight, Darkness and the Moon
Sunset is not darkness. Astronomers split twilight by how far the Sun has sunk: civil (to 6° below the horizon, the brightest planets appear), nautical (to 12°, the main stars and the horizon still faintly visible) and astronomical (to 18°, after which the sky is as dark as it will get). At mid-latitudes in midsummer the Sun never gets 18° down, so there is no true darkness at all; far enough north it never sets. The Moon matters as much as the Sun: a full Moon brightens the sky enough to hide the Milky Way and most meteors, while a crescent near new Moon barely registers.
What the Chart Is — and Isn’t
The chart is an azimuthal projection centred on the zenith: straight up is the middle, the horizon is the edge, and equal steps outward are equal steps in altitude. Constellations near the edge look stretched, just as the real ones do when you look at them low down. Positions include precession and atmospheric refraction, and are accurate to a fraction of the Moon’s width. The chart does not show the Milky Way, deep-sky objects or satellites; for the International Space Station and other bright passes use the Satellite Pass Predictor.
Related tools: the Aurora & Space Weather Forecast for nights when the sky might do something extra, and the Golden Hour Planner for the light either side of the night. Browse every Math & Science tool.
Frequently Asked Questions
What planets can I see tonight?
It depends on where each planet is in its orbit relative to the Sun and Earth, which changes over weeks and months. Mercury and Venus never stray far from the Sun, so they only appear low in the west after sunset or low in the east before sunrise. Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be up all night around opposition. This tool computes each one for your exact location and night and lists those that climb at least ten degrees above the horizon while the sky is dark.
How do I tell a planet from a star?
Planets shine with a steady light while stars twinkle, because a planet shows a tiny disc rather than a point and the atmosphere averages out the shimmer. Planets also sit close to the ecliptic, the line the Sun and Moon follow, and they are often brighter than any star nearby: Venus reaches magnitude minus four and Jupiter minus two. If a bright steady light is not on the chart as a star, check the planet markers.
What do altitude and compass bearing mean?
Altitude is the angle above the horizon, from 0 degrees at the horizon to 90 degrees straight overhead. A fist held at arm's length covers roughly 10 degrees, so an object at 30 degrees is about three fists up. The compass bearing, or azimuth, is the direction measured clockwise from north: 90 degrees is east, 180 is south and 270 is west. Face the bearing, count up the fists, and the object is there.
When is the best time to stargaze tonight?
After astronomical twilight ends, when the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon and the sky is fully dark, and ideally when the Moon is below the horizon or a thin crescent. A bright Moon washes out faint stars and meteors much as twilight does. The results show the dark window for your night and the Moon's rise and set times so you can find the gap. Give your eyes 20 to 30 minutes away from screens and white light to adapt.
How accurate are the rise and set times?
The positions come from the astronomy-engine library, and before shipping this tool was checked against the US Naval Observatory tables for Washington DC, Sydney and Reykjavik over 30 days: 1,600 rise and set times for the Sun, Moon and all seven planets agreed within 0.61 minutes, well inside the one-minute rounding of the published tables. Real horizons differ, though. Hills, buildings and haze near the horizon delay what you actually see by several minutes.
