Where is everything in the sky?
Pick a place on Earth and any moment from 1900 to 2200. See sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset, the Moon's phase, and where to look for every planet. Worked out in your browser: nothing is sent anywhere.
The sky
The circle is the whole sky: the edge is the horizon and the middle is straight overhead. Hold it above your head with north to the north, so east is on the left. Tap anything for details. The dashed line is the path the Sun, Moon and planets follow.
Moonrise and moonset
| Day | Moonrise | Rises in the | Highest | Moonset | Sets in the | Moon |
|---|
Times are on the place's clock, for a flat horizon. The Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day, so once a month there's a day with no moonrise and another with no moonset. Click a day to see that night's sky.
Where to look
| Body | At the chosen time | Rises | Highest | Sets | Brightness | In front of | Distance |
|---|
Times are for the chosen day on the place's clock, for a flat horizon. Brightness is magnitude: the lower the number, the brighter (Sirius, the brightest star, is −1.5; about 6 is the faintest you can see without a telescope).
The Sun
The Moon
Through the day
How high each body is from midnight to midnight. Above the thick line it's above the horizon; the shading shows daylight, twilight and night. Click the chart to go to that time.
The month
| Day | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight | Moonrise | Moonset | Moon |
|---|
Coming up
- Working it out…
How far ahead can it look?
A long way. The Moon and planets move in orbits that are known very precisely, so this page works their positions out from the same planetary theory that observatories and almanacs use. A date in 2120 is calculated just the same way as tonight, and to within a small fraction of the Moon's width.
There are three small catches for far-off dates:
- The Earth's spin slows a little, and not quite predictably. Tides and changes inside the Earth make each day very slightly longer, so the planet's rotation is a few seconds out of step with perfect clockwork every few years. A century ahead that uncertainty adds up to around a minute, so rise and set times for 2100 and beyond could be out by about that much.
- Clocks change. Future times use today's time zone and summer time rules. If a country changes them, local times will move by an hour, though the sky itself won't.
- Real horizons aren't flat. Rise and set times assume a flat horizon at sea level and normal air. Hills, buildings and unusual weather can change them by a few minutes.
The calculations use Astronomy Engine by Don Cross (MIT licence), which is checked against NASA's JPL data and the US Naval Observatory to within about an arcminute from 1700 to 2200. It is part of this page, so nothing about where you are or what you look up leaves your browser.