Tonight’s sky
What’s in the sky tonight?
Pick where you are to see which planets you can spot, the phase of the Moon, and when the sky gets dark. Everything is calculated in your browser.
Choose your location above to see tonight’s sky.
About tonight’s sky
How visibility is decided and where the numbers come from.
For your location, the page follows each planet from sunset to sunrise and keeps only the moments when the Sun is at least 6° below the horizon, so the sky is properly dark. A planet that climbs above 20° in that time is marked “Easy to see”, 10° to 20° is “Low in the sky”, and anything under 10° is “Hard to see” because haze and buildings get in the way near the horizon.
They are calculated in your browser by Astronomy Engine, an open-source library based on the VSOP87 planetary theory, which its authors check against NASA JPL Horizons to about one arcminute. Sunrise, sunset and Moon phases use the same engine, so they match published almanac times to within a minute or two. Nothing is sent to a server and no data is stored about you.
It is the astronomers’ brightness scale, and lower is brighter. Venus peaks near −4.9, Jupiter ranges from about −1.6 to −2.9, and Sirius, the brightest star, is −1.5. The faintest stars you can see under a dark sky are about +6. All five planets listed here are visible without a telescope when they are above the horizon.
Sunrise and sunset are measured when the top edge of the Sun touches the horizon, and they include the bending of light by the atmosphere. Sites also differ in how they treat your height above sea level and in rounding. Differences of a minute or two are normal. The page uses the time zone of the place you pick, so it still shows correct local times if you are looking at somewhere else.
Which planets you can see depends on where you stand. Someone in Chennai sees the ecliptic, the path of the planets, high overhead, while someone in London sees it lower in the south, and in the southern hemisphere the sky is flipped. Pick the city you are in to get the right answer.