Mercury
evening sky, after sunset
Never far from the Sun, and only worth chasing within a week or two of greatest elongation.
29 September 2026 · computed at 00:59 UTC
Overhead
The state of the Sun, where the aurora reaches tonight, what the Moon is doing, which planets are up, and what is due past. The Moon and the planets are computed rather than fetched — they were arithmetic long before there was anything to ask — and the space weather is NOAA's, refreshed on every gather.
The auroral oval
Meteor showers
The same rock, a very different night, depending on which half of the world you are standing on
From the northern hemisphere
Orionids
· peaks in 23 days
20/hr at best · realistically about 7 from a dark garden
Halley again, from the other side of its orbit. Fast meteors, a broad peak, and a radiant that does not clear the horizon until late.
Equatorial radiant, so both hemispheres get a fair view of this one.
Leonids
· peaks in 50 days
15/hr at best · realistically about 5 from a dark garden
Quiet in most years and extraordinary in a few: the 1966 storm reached thousands an hour, and the parent comet returns every 33 years.
Visible from both hemispheres, with a slight advantage to the north.
Geminids
· peaks in 77 days
150/hr at best · realistically about 50 from a dark garden
The richest shower of the year, and the strangest — its parent is a rock, not a comet. Slow, bright, often yellow, and the radiant is up all night.
Excellent from the north and still good from the south, which is unusual and welcome.
From the southern hemisphere
Orionids
· peaks in 23 days
20/hr at best · realistically about 7 from a dark garden
Halley again, from the other side of its orbit. Fast meteors, a broad peak, and a radiant that does not clear the horizon until late.
Equatorial radiant, so both hemispheres get a fair view of this one.
Leonids
· peaks in 50 days
15/hr at best · realistically about 5 from a dark garden
Quiet in most years and extraordinary in a few: the 1966 storm reached thousands an hour, and the parent comet returns every 33 years.
Visible from both hemispheres, with a slight advantage to the north.
Geminids
· peaks in 77 days
150/hr at best · realistically about 50 from a dark garden
The richest shower of the year, and the strangest — its parent is a rock, not a comet. Slow, bright, often yellow, and the radiant is up all night.
Excellent from the north and still good from the south, which is unusual and welcome.
The chart
Every star down to magnitude 5, where it is right now, from where you are
Say where you are — the panel below, or the button here — and the sky over that spot is drawn.
The rim of the circle is your horizon and the middle is the point directly overhead; north is at the top and east is to the left, because you are looking up at this rather than down at a map. The two faint rings are 30° and 60° up — a clenched fist at arm's length is about ten degrees, so the inner ring is six fists above the skyline. Stars are the Yale Bright Star Catalogue down to magnitude 5, which is roughly what a suburban sky shows; the constellation figures are the stick shapes people actually point at rather than the official boundaries. Positions are catalogue J2000 without precession or refraction — a fraction of a degree out, and far better than anyone can point.
From where you are
Station passes and tonight's darkness, computed in your browser
Visible station passes
Enter a position above and the next five days of visible passes will appear here.
Passes are computed from the station's published orbital elements, fetched 2026-09-29 00:59 UTC, using Kepler's equation plus the secular effects of Earth's equatorial bulge. Against fresh elements that lands within a minute or so over a few days. A pass is listed only when all three conditions hold at once: the station is above 10° from your horizon, the Sun is at least 6° below it, and the station itself is still in sunlight — which is why they cluster after dusk and before dawn.
Passing close
Inside twenty lunar distances, next two months
2025 UK9
0.8 lunar distances · 314,648 km
3–6 m · 7.8 km/s
2022 UP6
2.6 lunar distances · 1,004,947 km
6–14 m · 9.0 km/s
2019 AS2
4.5 lunar distances · 1,720,503 km
37–82 m · 7.3 km/s
2015 TS238
4.7 lunar distances · 1,813,910 km
22–49 m · 15.8 km/s
2018 SP2
5.0 lunar distances · 1,927,097 km
29–65 m · 14.3 km/s
2021 VC4
6.0 lunar distances · 2,291,695 km
11–25 m · 11.2 km/s
2026 RP39
6.1 lunar distances · 2,336,970 km
16–35 m · 6.1 km/s
2023 VF3
8.4 lunar distances · 3,239,446 km
14–31 m · 8.8 km/s
2015 VH65
9.7 lunar distances · 3,726,300 km
8–17 m · 8.0 km/s
2026 RX38
9.9 lunar distances · 3,815,397 km
25–55 m · 14.3 km/s
2026 SB12
10.1 lunar distances · 3,887,674 km
23–51 m · 10.3 km/s
2024 SH7
10.5 lunar distances · 4,031,570 km
9–21 m · 10.8 km/s
Every one of these is tracked, and none of them is going to hit anything. The Moon is 384,400 km away, which is one lunar distance; a rock passing at two is closer than most of the things in this list, and still four times further out than any satellite.
Everything else up there
All 110 Messier objects →This page is the sky as a whole — where the Moon is, which planets are up, what the Sun is doing. What it does not tell you is whether any particular thing in it is worth going outside for, which depends on how bright your sky is and what you would be looking through.
The object pages answer that one. Each of the 110 Messier objects has its own page giving magnitude, surface brightness and a computed table of whether it is straightforward, a challenge or hopeless — for nine grades of sky against five instruments, from the naked eye to a 200mm telescope. The month it is best in and the altitude it reaches from six latitudes are on the same page, because an object that never clears your horizon is not a matter of aperture.
Space weather comes from NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center and the close approaches from JPL's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. The chart's stars are the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, its figures Olaf Frohn's.
The Moon and planets are accurate to about a degree — enough to say where something is, not enough to point a telescope with.
This page does not know where you are. The planet notes hold from anywhere on Earth, and rise and set times, which do depend on your latitude, are not guessed at.