Night sky tonight
The sky over a place, looking up: the stars, the planets, the Moon and the Sun where they really are from there, the Moon's phase drawn, and the satellites in sunlight crossing the dark. By day the clock starts at tonight's dusk, the Sun 12° down, so the page opens on the night ahead rather than a blue sky.
It stands at 40° north in your own time zone until you give it a place: search your town (/) or press My location, and the sky turns to what you will see from there. Under this, the list says in words what holds tonight from anywhere: which planets are in the evening sky and which in the morning, the Moon, and the next meteor shower.
Tonight's sky, 2 Nov
- Moonlast quarter, 41% lit; new Moon 9 Nov, full Moon 24 Nov
- Mercurytoo close to the Sun to see, 5° from it
- Venuslow in the east before sunrise · magnitude −4.3, in Virgo
- Marsin the morning sky, rising during the night and highest before dawn · magnitude 0.9, in Leo
- Jupiterin the morning sky, rising during the night and highest before dawn · magnitude −2.0, in Leo
- Saturnin the evening sky, high at dusk and setting before dawn · magnitude 0.4, in Cetus
- Leonidsthe next meteor shower, peaking around 17 Nov at up to 15 meteors an hour under a dark sky, best from anywhere, before dawn
What holds from anywhere on Earth, worked out with astronomy-engine as this page was served; the sky view and each city's page give the times.
How to read it
Planets are drawn like stars but named beside them, each tinted by its true color, Mars plainly orange and the others near white. They shine steadily rather than twinkle, and they keep to one line across the sky, the ecliptic, which the Sun and Moon follow too. The Moon is at its true size with its phase in its label (“MOON · WAXING GIBBOUS 79%”); off screen, a chevron at the edge points to it, saying when it’s below the horizon.
How many stars show depends on the Sun and on the town: down to magnitude 6.5 in a dark country sky, only the brightest few dozen under a big city, estimated from how bright its lights are from orbit. The readout says how dark the sky is, the twilight it’s in, the faintest stars shown and when the ISS next passes; the ISS’s path across the sky is drawn dashed, gold when you can see it.
Drag to look around, scroll or pinch to widen the view, double-click to turn to a spot. Click the Moon or a planet for its window: how high it is and which way, when it rises and sets on the place’s clock, how bright, and the constellation it’s in. On a phone, Follow phone turns the view with the phone, so you can hold it up and match the screen to the sky. ^ or Back to Earth returns to the globe.
Questions
What planets are visible tonight?
The list on this page says which are in the evening sky, which in the morning sky and which are too close to the Sun, and the sky view shows them from wherever you stand. Venus and Jupiter are the brightest things in the night sky after the Moon, so a dazzling “star” low in the west after sunset or in the east before dawn is usually Venus.
How do I see the sky from my own town?
Search for it with / or use My location: the view stands there, looking the same way. Each big city also has a page of its own, with tonight’s rise and set times on that city’s clock.
Why does the page open at dusk?
By day the sky view is a blue sky with nothing in it but the Sun and perhaps the Moon, so this page starts its clock at tonight’s dusk where it stands. The clock then runs on from there; T jumps to now, and the time controls scrub through the night.
Sources
The same view as a link: livex.earth/?clouds=0&radar=0&imerg=0&sats=featured&launches=0&aurora=0&storms=0&severe=0&fires=0&quakes=0&lightning=0&events=0&snow=0&tsunami=0&view=sky&lat=40&tonight=1
Drag to look around, scroll to zoom. Settings live in the URL, so any view can be shared.
view | fixed · sunrel · orbit · moon · track |
track | what to follow: iss, tiangong, satgus (Mark Rober's Space Selfie satellite), launch, sunrise, moonrise |
lat, lon | viewer position (fixed) or offset from the subsolar point (sunrel) |
period, inc | orbit period (hours) and inclination (°) |
dist | viewer distance in Earth radii; 0 = orthographic |
mag, rot | size and rotation (°) |
wait | seconds between redraws (default 60) |
time, speed | ISO start time; clock multiplier |
clouds, lights, grid, markers, label | 0 or 1 |
borders | Country borders (Natural Earth), the disputed and undefined ones dashed, and once zoomed in, the countries’ names and the states’ and provinces’ lines, off by default (key B) |
terminator | The day–night line (Sun on the horizon), with the twilight band’s edges dashed: the Sun 6° up and 6° down, off by default (key Z) |
stars | 1, 0, or photo (dimmed like a camera exposed for sunlit Earth) |
sats | all (Starlink + named), featured, or 0 |
aurora, storms, fires, quakes | 0 hides that layer (keys A H F E) |
buoys, buoy | Buoys on the globe, off by default (key Shift+B); buoy=46026 opens that buoy’s window. Click a buoy to open it. |
meteors | The last day’s meteors (Global Meteor Network), recent fireballs and the coming close approaches (NASA/JPL), off by default (key Shift+M) |
iono | Ionosphere wash: tec electron content (GloTEC), drap HF radio absorption (D-RAP), or 0 (key Shift+I) |
lightning, events, snow | lightning, GDACS floods/wildfires/eruptions with NASA's flood map and USGS's US volcano alert levels, snow and ice (keys L D I) |
sst | Sea temperature: temp, anomaly (El Niño, marine heatwaves; 1 means this), or 0 (key O) |
lst | Land surface temperature (VIIRS, MODIS): auto the afternoon’s by day and the night’s by night (1 means this), day, night, or 0 (key Shift+K) |
soil | Soil moisture (SMAP L4): surface the top 5 cm (1 means this), root the root zone to 1 m, or 0 (key Shift+W) |
chl | Chlorophyll-a (MODIS Aqua, Terra), the last eight days: 1 or 0 (key Shift+O; off by default) |
aerosol | Aerosols: aod VIIRS optical depth (1 means this), index the OMPS UV aerosol index, smoke and dust, or 0 (key Shift+Y; off by default) |
waves, wavesrc | Wave height and direction (NOAA GFS-Wave, WAVEWATCH III) as trails that travel with the waves, coloured by height: 1 or 0 (off by default); folder holding its latest.json |
currents, currentsrc | Ocean surface currents (NASA OSCAR, a daily mean, two or three days behind) as trails carried by them, coloured by speed: 1 or 0 (off by default; key Q cycles waves → currents → both → off); folder holding its latest.json |
coral, coralsrc | Coral bleaching heat stress (NOAA Coral Reef Watch degree heating weeks), drawn within 35° of the equator: 1 or 0 (key Shift+R; off by default); folder holding its latest.json |
ash | volcanic ash: EUMETSAT's Ash RGB, and GDACS's eruptions in a window (key Shift+A; off by default) |
radar, smoke, tsunami | RainViewer radar, NOAA HMS smoke, NOAA tsunami alerts (keys R Y Shift+T) |
imagery | live GOES and MTG pictures by day, daily yesterday’s VIIRS when zoomed in, painted neither; with live or daily, the newest night’s lights when zoomed in (key Shift+P; the older truecolor=0/1 still works) |
severe | Severe weather: NWS warning polygons and the SPC day-1 outlook (US), MeteoAlarm's warnings (Europe) (key X) |
imerg | With the radar, satellite rain where there’s no radar: EUMETSAT H SAF (MTG) over Europe and Africa, NASA IMERG elsewhere (R’s middle step turns it off) |
relief | terrain lit by the real Sun, from NOAA ETOPO 2022 (key Shift+E); 0 shows NASA's fixed shaded relief |
reliefscale | terrain relief strength, 0.1–5 (default 1) |
isslive | NASA ISS telemetry panel: track (while tracking the ISS), 1 (always) or 0 (key Shift+L) |
isscam | 1 opens the camera in the ISS telemetry: the station from 120 m above, its solar arrays posed from the live telemetry, and the Earth below (the wheel zooms it, 30–120°) |
firehours | show fires detected within this many hours, 1–24 (default 12) |
launches | 0 hides launch mode (key U) |
bodies, bodyscale | Sun and Moon on/off; enlarge their discs (1 = true size) |
fps | 1 shows the frame-rate display (key ~) |
feeds | 1 shows the data-feeds dashboard: each source's last update and next check (key Shift+U) |
cloudsrc, satsrc | folders holding each latest.json |
