Sky
Night Sky Tonight
A one-page digest of tonight's darkness timeline, the Moon, the naked-eye planets, and your best window for dark-sky observing, for any date and place.
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Date and location
The night that begins on this evening. Years 1900 to 2050.
-90 to 90, north positive.
-180 to 180, east positive.
Tonight at a glance
Best window for dark-sky observing
Timeline of tonight: deeper shading means a darker sky (sunlight, then civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight, then full darkness); the brass bar marks when the Moon is above the horizon; the bracket marks the best window.
| Event | Time | Meaning |
|---|
The Moon tonight
Planets tonight
Pick an evening date and a location, then select Show tonight's sky.
How this digest works
Everything is computed in your browser from compact published series; your coordinates never leave your device. Sun times use the NOAA solar equations (Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, chapter 25). The Moon uses a truncated Meeus chapter 47 series (the 32 largest of 60 longitude and distance terms, the 30 largest of 60 latitude terms, plus the three additive terms), chapter 48 for illuminated fraction, and the standard rise and set altitude of 0.7275 times the lunar parallax minus 34 arcminutes, which accounts for parallax and average refraction. Planet directions come from E. M. Standish's JPL approximate Keplerian elements (fit range 1800 to 2050), with sidereal time from Meeus chapter 12 and an approximate Delta T.
Honest accuracy: sun and twilight times are typically within 1 to 2 minutes at mid-latitudes (worse above 72 degrees); moonrise and moonset are typically within about 2 to 5 minutes; moon illumination is within about 1 percent; planet altitudes are good to a degree or so, ample for the visibility verdicts shown. Positions are geocentric except the moonrise and moonset rule above; a sea-level horizon and average refraction are assumed, and nutation is neglected. All displayed times are rounded to the nearest minute, consistently across the table, the diagram, and the copied summary. Inside the polar circles the digest reports continuous daylight or night rather than inventing times, and near midsummer at mid-latitudes it will tell you the sky never reaches full astronomical darkness. All values are approximate planning aids, not an official almanac, and are unsuitable for navigation.
"Tonight" means the night that begins after local solar noon on the chosen date at the chosen longitude. Times are shown in your device's time zone, which is labelled with the results; for coordinates far from your own zone they are still your clock's times, not local wall-clock time there. This page is deliberately a digest: for full twilight tables see the sunrise and sunset times calculator, and for phase times through a whole month see the moon phase calendar.