Which planets are visible tonight?

ExoAtlas Tonight's Sky computes real-time planet positions for your exact location and shows which planets are above the horizon tonight, along with their rise, transit, and set times and maximum altitude.

What is the moon phase tonight?

The Tonight's Sky planner shows the current moon phase name (e.g. Waxing Crescent, Full Moon), illumination percentage, and rise/set times for your location.

Is the sky good for stargazing tonight?

ExoAtlas calculates a 0–100 sky-quality score combining cloud cover from the Open-Meteo weather forecast, your Bortle dark-sky class, moon illumination, and the number of bright planets up. A score above 75 means great conditions; below 35 means it's probably not worth going out.

What is a Bortle class?

The Bortle Dark-Sky Scale (1–9) rates the darkness of the night sky at your location. Class 1 is the darkest (rural, pristine sky) and class 9 is the brightest (inner city). ExoAtlas uses it to estimate limiting magnitude and recommend appropriate telescope targets.

Is ExoAtlas Tonight's Sky free?

Yes. The core planner — planet visibility, moon phase, conjunctions, weather score, altitude chart, and telescope target list for tonight — is completely free with no account required. Pro members ($5/month) unlock a 14-day forecast, hourly cloud-cover overlay, iCal export, and email/push sky alerts.

Tonight's Sky

Free stargazing planner — planets visible tonight, moon phase, sky-quality score & telescope targets for your location.

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Light pollution near you

D. Lorenz 2024 World Atlas · modeled zenith brightness from VIIRS DNB

Colors follow the published palette: black/gray = pristine to rural (Bortle 1–2), blue = rural (3), green = suburban (4), yellow/orange = bright suburban (5–6), red/magenta = urban (7–8), white = inner city (9). Your estimated Bortle is auto-detected from this layer — change it any time using the dropdown above.

Planets & Sun/Moon

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Body	Rises	Transits	Sets	Max alt	Mag

Times shown in your local timezone. Max alt < 0° means below the horizon all night.

Altitude tonight

Sweep from local sunset to sunrise. Shaded band marks astronomical twilight.

Moon

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Illumination: —
Rise: —
Set: —
Interference: —

Weather (Open-Meteo)

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Loading forecast…

Conjunctions this week

Pairs within 5° of each other

What to point at

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14-Day Forecast

Pro

See further into the future

Pro members unlock a 14-day forecast, weather/cloud cover overlay, iCal export of upcoming events, and email/push alerts when the skies clear up before a major conjunction or planetary opposition.

14-day planet visibility forecast
Hourly cloud cover & transparency overlay
iCal export — drop tonight's events into your calendar
Smart alerts ("Jupiter–Venus conjunction in 3 days, clear skies expected")

Upgrade to Pro

How is this calculated?

All astronomy is computed locally in your browser using ExoAtlas's in-house ephemeris engine — no third-party scripts, nothing sent to a server. Algorithms are based on Jean Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms (2nd ed.) and the JPL Solar System Dynamics "Keplerian Elements for Approximate Positions of the Major Planets" dataset (Standish, 1800–2050 element set).

Sun position accurate to ~0.01°
Major planets accurate to ~0.1° (within the JPL element validity window)
Moon position accurate to ~0.3° (truncated ELP series)
Rise/transit/set times accurate to ~1–2 minutes

Cloud cover and current temperature come from Open-Meteo (free, attribution-only). Sky-quality limiting magnitudes follow the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale.