What can I see in the night sky tonight?

Open the sky map and search for a postcode, zip code or town, or use your location.

What you can do

• See the whole sky as a dome above you, or switch to the horizon view and turn to face any direction.
• Find the best time tonight. The time bar runs from sunset to sunrise, coloured by how good the sky will be. Drag it to any time, or press play to watch the night go by.
• See what's up: the Moon and planets, bright stars and constellations, galaxies, nebulae and star clusters, and the International Space Station and other bright satellites.
• Tap anything to learn what it is, how bright it is, when it rises and sets, and whether you'll need binoculars or a telescope.
• Keep your night vision with the red mode, which keeps your eyes adapted to the dark while you use your phone.

How it works out what you can see

Lots of apps show every star in the catalogue. Night Sky works out which ones are bright enough to see from your sky, and hides the rest unless you ask for them. It combines:

• Light pollution. How bright your sky is from artificial light, from David Lorenz's 2025 light pollution atlas, which is based on satellite measurements. If you're observing from somewhere darker, you can set your own Bortle rating.
• The Moon. Moonlight brightens the sky depending on the Moon's phase, how high it is and how close it is to what you're looking at.
• Twilight. How far the Sun is below the horizon, from sunset through to full darkness.
• The air and the weather. Haze near the horizon, humidity, and the hourly cloud forecast from Open-Meteo.
• What kind of object it is. Galaxies and nebulae spread their light out, so they fade into a bright sky faster than stars of the same brightness.

Together these give the faintest star you can see, and a sky score from 0 to 100. The score for every 15 minutes of the night colours the time bar, and the stretch around the highest score is tonight's best window.

Good to know

• Weather forecasts cover about the next seven days. Further ahead, cloud isn't taken into account.
• Forecasts often get patchy cloud wrong. If your sky is clearer than forecast, tap “Is it clear where you are?” or switch on “It's clear here” in the conditions card.
• The clouds drawn on the map show how much cloud there is, not where it is.
• Times are shown in the local time of the place you're viewing.
• Everything is an estimate. Your eyesight, nearby lights and how long your eyes have had to adapt to the dark all make a difference.
• Never look at the Sun, especially through binoculars or a telescope.

Free and private

Night Sky is free, needs no account, and doesn't use cookies or trackers. Read the privacy policy and terms of use, and see the credits for the data and software it's built on.