A live view of the sky for your place: the next 24 hours of sunrise, sunset, twilight and dark, the Moon and the bright planets rising and setting, and the hourly cloud forecast; then the Moon's phase, where each planet sits, and the next sky events.
Brightness is apparent magnitude, where lower is brighter and a negative figure is brighter still. Motion is how far the planet shifts against the stars in a day. Retrograde means it is drifting westward, an effect of Earth and the planet lapping one another rather than anything the planet is doing, and stationary marks the day a planet turns between the two directions.
Naked-eye planets are listed first; Uranus and Neptune need binoculars or a telescope, and Pluto, reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006, is a faint speck for large telescopes only. A morning-sky planet rises in the east before dawn; an evening-sky planet is in the west after sunset. A bright outer planet near opposition is the exception, rising in the east at dusk and standing highest around midnight, so it is up most of the night. Those compass directions are the same in both hemispheres; only the height and whether the planet leans toward the south or north flip when you cross the equator. For each object's exact direction and height tonight, see What's Up Tonight below.
Open the Live Orrery to watch these positions change over time, or the Planet Parade Tracker to find the next time several planets gather in your sky.
Positions on this page are computed live for the current date and time, in your device's time zone.
What's up tonight: the best things to see
A ranked list of what is worth looking at tonight from your location: the Moon, the bright planets, and showpiece star clusters, nebulae and galaxies, each with how high it climbs, when, which way to look, and whether to use your eyes, binoculars or a telescope. See the gear that helps you see more. Prefer to look around instead of reading a list? Open tonight's sky full-screen →
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Objects that climb at least 12° tonight, best-placed first; "highest" is when each peaks. The planets at the top need only 5° after dusk. Times are in the same time zone as the top of the page. The sky is computed entirely in your browser; naming your city and searching for one are both answered from a place index served with this page. To choose a moonless night, see the dark window on the Sunrise & Sunset page.
Meteor showers: what's coming up
Loading the meteor-shower calendar...
New to showers? The meteor showers lesson explains debris streams, the radiant, ZHR, and why the hours after midnight are best.
Saturn & Jupiter up close
Working out Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons...
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About this page
The sky here is worked out live from the Astronomy Engine library when you load the page, for the current date and time on your device. The one exception is the cloud forecast at the top, which is MET Norway's (CC BY 4.0), for your place rounded to about a kilometer and fetched through our server. The Moon's phase, the planets' positions along the zodiac, and the dates of the next moons, eclipses and seasons are all computed on the spot, so the page is always current.
The zodiac positions are tropical ecliptic longitudes, the same measure used across the site, with 0° at the spring equinox point. A planet listed as a morning object rises before the Sun; an evening object sets after it. A planet within about 15° of the Sun is lost in the glare and hard to see.
Frequently asked questions
What is in the sky tonight?
The top of this page shows the next 24 hours of the sky for your place: sunrise, sunset and when it gets dark, when the Moon and each bright planet rise and set and when they stand high enough to see, the cloud forecast hour by hour, and a countdown to the next sunrise, sunset, moonrise or moonset. Below that are the Moon's phase, where each planet sits, and the next new and full moons, equinox or solstice, and eclipses. The sky is computed in your browser and kept current while the page is open; the cloud forecast is MET Norway's, fetched for your place rounded to about a kilometer.
Where are the planets right now?
The planets-now table lists the planets, each with the tropical zodiac sign it currently occupies, its brightness, whether it is running direct or retrograde and how fast, and whether it is a morning object, an evening object, or lost in the Sun's glare. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn can be seen with the naked eye; Uranus and Neptune need binoculars or a telescope.
Which planets are retrograde right now?
The line above the planets table answers that for the current moment, and the Motion column marks each planet as direct, retrograde, or stationary on the day it turns, with its daily drift against the stars. A retrograde planet is not doing anything unusual: the backward drift is the view from a moving Earth as the two planets lap one another. For the exact dates each planet turns, see the retrograde page.
What zodiac sign is the Sun in today?
The Sun card shows the Sun's tropical zodiac sign, which is its position along the ecliptic counted in twelve equal parts from the March equinox, and names the constellation whose stars are actually behind the Sun, which precession and the constellations' unequal sizes make a different one for most of the year. It also gives the date of the next equinox or solstice.
When is the next full moon, eclipse, or solstice?
The next sky events list shows the soonest of each: the next new and full moons, the next equinox or solstice, the next solar and lunar eclipses with their type, and the next great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Each date is computed live for the current moment.