Home / Science / Astronomy and space / Observing / Sky tonightTool #13

What's in the sky tonight: planets, Moon phase, dark hours and best objects to see

For your place and date: sunset, when it gets properly dark, the Moon's phase and rise and set times, where each planet is, and the best galaxies, clusters and nebulae for your eyes, binoculars or telescope.

Keep it one tap away for everyday use.

Bookmark Sky tonight?

Press Ctrl + D now. Your browser opens its own bookmark box, where you choose the name and folder.

  1. Your place
  2. Pick a night
  3. See it all
  4. Take it out
Nothing is uploadedWorks offline once open

The night

Planets and the Moon

Best deep-sky objects tonight

Objects that climb above that height while it is dark, brightest first. Tap one to see its height through the night.

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Plan a night under the stars in one page

Before you carry a telescope outside, or just step out with binoculars, you want to know a few things. When does it get dark? Is the Moon going to wash out the sky? Which planets are up, and when are they highest? What’s worth pointing at? Sky tonight answers all of these for your exact place and date. It works it out on your device from accurate orbits, and it keeps working without an internet connection.

How to use it

  1. Set your place. Pick a city, type your latitude and longitude, or press Use my location. Your location stays on your device. Tick Remember my place to keep it for next time.
  2. Pick the night. The date is the evening the night starts. After midnight, the page still shows the night you are in.
  3. Read The night: sunset, the hours when it is properly dark (the Sun more than 18° below the horizon), sunrise, and the Moon’s phase and rise and set times.
  4. Planets and the Moon shows when each planet rises, when it is highest (and how high), and when it sets, with its brightness (magnitude) and constellation. The chart draws their height through the night over the sky colour: day, twilight and full dark.
  5. Best deep-sky objects lists galaxies, clusters and nebulae that climb above the height you choose while it is dark, brightest first. Choose what you observe with and the list changes to suit. Tap any object to open its full altitude chart.
  6. Download the night as an image, PDF or Word file to take outside or print.

What the numbers mean

  • Magnitude (Mag): brightness. Smaller is brighter, and negative is very bright. The eye reaches about 5 to 6 under dark skies, binoculars about 8 to 9, and a small telescope 10 to 12.
  • Highest: the time the object crosses your meridian (due south from the northern hemisphere, due north from the southern) and its height then. Objects are clearest when high, because you look through less air.
  • From Moon: the angle between the object and the Moon. Faint objects close to a bright Moon are hard to see.

Worked example

From Toronto on the night of 7 November 2026, the Sun sets at 17:00 and it is properly dark from 18:38 to 05:24. The Moon is only 1% lit, two days before new Moon, and doesn’t rise until 06:31: a dark night all night. Saturn is best in the evening (highest at 21:45), while Jupiter rises around midnight and is high before dawn. The binocular list starts with the Pleiades, the Beehive Cluster and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Questions

Where does the object list come from? The catalogue holds all 110 Messier objects and about 440 bright NGC and IC objects from the OpenNGC catalogue (CC BY-SA 4.0, Mattia Verga). Positions are J2000, and the page works out where they are tonight.

Why is a planet greyed out? It is never more than 10° above the horizon during the night, or it is too close to the Sun to see.

Last updated 2026-11-07.

Change log for Sky tonight

  1. Black-and-white look, a light/dark switch on every page, red light beside it Details on GitHub
  2. Tool #numbers, the name's meaning, and the MIT License Details on GitHub
  3. Ten astronomy tools on the Science shelf, with PNG, PDF and Word downloads Details on GitHub

Every change to fibub

Related tools

Observing session planner #18 Pick the astronomy tools you need for a night (sky tonight, target heights, polar alignment, your telescope, the month's events and a log sheet), see them together on one page, and download them as one image, PDF or Word file, or each on its own. Sun position calculator #61 Find where the Sun is at any place and moment: its altitude and azimuth, how long shadows are, sunrise, sunset, solar noon, twilight, a sun path diagram and a year of day lengths. Light pollution calculator #51 Turn a sky quality meter reading, the faintest star you can see, a Bortle class or a luminance into all the others, see how much artificial light adds to your sky, and how much longer your images need than at a dark site. Target altitude planner #14 Plot how high your targets climb through the night, against your own trees and roofs. Get meridian (pier flip) times, the hours above a useful height, airmass and parallactic angle for one target or a whole list. Polar alignment helper #15 See the clock position of Polaris (or Sigma Octantis in the south) for your place and time, drawn on a polar scope reticle, so you can line up your equatorial mount in a minute. Sky events calendar #16 A month-by-month sky calendar for your place: Moon phases and how much is lit each night, meteor shower peaks, eclipses you can see, planet oppositions and elongations, and equinoxes, with a one-tap calendar file. Observing log #17 Log what you see at the eyepiece or camera: object, equipment, seeing, transparency and notes. Each time you save, choose a new log file or add to an existing one, so your files grow into a database of every observation. Jupiter's moons #62 See where Jupiter's four large moons are at any moment, in the same orientation as your eyepiece, and list the coming transits, shadow transits, occultations and eclipses you can see from your place. Dark-sky calendar #45 See a whole year of nights at once: twilight, true darkness and moonlight for your place, the Moon-free dark hours in each month, and the best nights for deep-sky observing and imaging. Telescope and camera calculator #19 Enter your telescope, eyepieces and camera to see magnification, true field, exit pupil, faintest stars, image scale and whether your camera suits your seeing, with a picture of what fits in the view. Star trails and exposure calculator #20 Find the longest exposure before stars start to trail with your camera and lens (NPF and 500 rule), and plan star-trail sequences: frames, total time and card space. Meteor shower planner #50 Pick a shower such as the Perseids or Geminids and see how many meteors an hour to expect from your place and sky, hour by hour, where the Moon will be, and how much moonless dark time each night around the peak has.