Sky calendar

The next 18 months of things that happen on a date, solved from the ephemeris rather than kept in a list. Almost every one is the same instant for everybody on Earth, so a date here needs no location to be true — what is visible tonight is the list that does depend on where you are standing.

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Coming up

] SOONEST FIRST
SHOW
EVERYTHINGMOONPLANETSMETEOR SHOWERSECLIPSESFLYBYSSUN
+WHAT THE EIGHT KINDS ARE
  • Eclipses — solar and lunar, with where on Earth a solar one is greatest.
  • Meteor showers — dated by where the Earth is in its orbit, not by a fixed calendar day.
  • Moon phases — the four quarters, which set what else is worth chasing that fortnight.
  • Close pairings — two bright things within a few degrees of each other.
  • Oppositions — the night each outer planet is closest, biggest and up all night.
  • Elongations — the mornings and evenings Mercury and Venus stand furthest from the Sun.
  • Equinoxes and solstices — the four turning points of the year.
  • Flybys — near-Earth asteroids passing inside twenty lunar distances.
FROM WHERE
MAUNA KEAATACAMASVALBARDSYDNEYONLY WHAT I CAN SEE

Hiding what cannot be seen from ATACAMA at all. Each month says how many it dropped and why; anything merely low stays on the list, with its altitude.

ADD TO YOUR CALENDAR ↓The next twelve months as an .ics file, filtered exactly as you have it here — import it, or subscribe and it stays current.
[

February 2027

] 1 EVENT
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+1 MORE NOT VISIBLE FROM ATACAMA
  • 2027-02-20Penumbral lunar eclipse — The Moon is below the horizon from ATACAMA for the whole of it — this one belongs to the other side of the planet.
  • 6
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    ECLIPSE--:--

    Annular solar eclipse

    The Moon passes centrally across the Sun but is too far from Earth to cover it, so at greatest eclipse — over 31.3°S, 48.5°W — a ring of Sun stays visible all the way round it, with 86% of the disc covered. It never gets dark and it is never safe to look at without a certified solar filter.

    SunMoonON THE MAP
    +WHAT TO EXPECT
    COVERED
    86% — of the disc, at the point where the eclipse is greatest
    GREATEST OVER
    31.3°S, 48.5°W — where the Moon's shadow passes closest to the centre of the Earth

    FROM ATACAMA — 35% of the Sun covered at greatest, a partial eclipse here, running from --:-- to --:-- with the Sun 65° up at the deepest point.

    Never with an unaided eye, and never through binoculars or a telescope without a filter made for the job — a moment of it does permanent damage. Certified eclipse glasses for looking, or a pinhole in a card projecting onto a second card, which costs nothing and is safe for a crowd.

[

July 2027

] NOTHING VISIBLE FROM HERE
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+1 MORE NOT VISIBLE FROM ATACAMA
  • 2027-07-18Penumbral lunar eclipse — The Moon is below the horizon from ATACAMA for the whole of it — this one belongs to the other side of the planet.
    [

    August 2027

    ] 1 EVENT
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    +1 MORE NOT VISIBLE FROM ATACAMA
    • 2027-08-02Total solar eclipse — None of it reaches ATACAMA: the Moon's shadow crosses a different part of the Earth, and from here the Sun is not touched at all.
    • 17
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      ECLIPSE--:--

      Penumbral lunar eclipse

      The Moon passes through the soft outer edge of Earth's shadow, not the dark core of it. The whole disc dims slightly and unevenly — enough to notice in a photograph taken before and after, and easy to miss by eye.

      MoonEarthON THE MAP
      +WHAT TO EXPECT

      FROM ATACAMA — worth being outside between --:-- and --:--, when it is both dark and more than 20° up. It is highest at --:--, 78° above the N horizon.

      Nothing needed at all: a lunar eclipse is safe to watch with your eyes, and binoculars mostly add colour. It is slow — over an hour from first shadow to deepest — so it rewards going out more than once rather than standing outside for the whole of it.

    [

    January 2028

    ] 2 EVENTS
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    • 12
      WED
      ECLIPSE--:--

      Partial lunar eclipse

      Earth's shadow crosses 3% of the Moon's disc at the deepest point, over about 58 minutes — a clean curved bite out of a full moon, obvious to the naked eye and to a phone camera. Visible from wherever the Moon is above the horizon at the time.

      MoonEarthON THE MAP
      +WHAT TO EXPECT
      COVERED
      3% — of the disc, at the point where the eclipse is greatest
      DEEPEST PHASE
      58 min

      FROM ATACAMA — worth being outside between --:-- and --:--, when it is both dark and more than 20° up. It is highest at --:--, 42° above the N horizon.

      Nothing needed at all: a lunar eclipse is safe to watch with your eyes, and binoculars mostly add colour. It is slow — over an hour from first shadow to deepest — so it rewards going out more than once rather than standing outside for the whole of it.

    • 26
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      ECLIPSE--:--

      Annular solar eclipse

      A ring of Sun stays visible around the Moon, greatest over 3.0°N, 51.5°W.

      SunMoonON THE MAP
      +WHAT TO EXPECT
      COVERED
      85% — of the disc, at the point where the eclipse is greatest
      GREATEST OVER
      3.0°N, 51.5°W — where the Moon's shadow passes closest to the centre of the Earth

      FROM ATACAMA — 26% of the Sun covered at greatest, a partial eclipse here, running from --:-- to --:-- with the Sun 46° up at the deepest point.

      Never with an unaided eye, and never through binoculars or a telescope without a filter made for the job — a moment of it does permanent damage. Certified eclipse glasses for looking, or a pinhole in a card projecting onto a second card, which costs nothing and is safe for a crowd.

    4 events for the 18 months from today, of the kinds selected above, of which every one can be seen from ATACAMA. Times are instants, shown on your own clock; how every number here was made.

    Nothing here is a hand-kept list. Every date except the flybys is solved from the same ephemeris the rest of the site uses to place the planets, at the moment you load the page; a meteor shower is dated by the longitude the Sun reaches rather than by a day of the month, which is why its date moves a little from year to year. The same events are available as JSON and CSV.

    The 44 close approaches come from NASA/JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, as they stood on 2026-09-08, and cover passes inside 20 lunar distances from 2026-08-09 through 2028-04-10. Unlike everything else on this page they cannot be computed from an ephemeris here — a newly discovered asteroid has no orbit until somebody measures one — so they are as complete as that date and no more.

    [

    COMMON QUESTIONS

    ] 10 ANSWERED
    Why is there not an eclipse every month?
    Because the Moon's orbit is tilted about five degrees to the Earth's, so at most new moons its shadow passes above or below us and misses. Eclipses arrive in seasons roughly twice a year, when the two orbital planes happen to line up with the Sun.
    What fixes the date of a meteor shower?
    Where the Earth is in its orbit, not the calendar. A shower is the Earth crossing a stream of dust a comet left behind, so the peak falls at the same point in the orbit every year and drifts by a few hours against the clock — which is why the dates here are solved rather than looked up.
    Why are moon phases on a list of events?
    Because moonlight decides what else is worth chasing. A full moon costs several magnitudes of faint detail across the whole sky, so the fortnight around new moon is when meteors, galaxies and nebulae actually repay the trip outside.
    What is an opposition, and why is it the night to look?
    Opposition is the moment an outer planet sits opposite the Sun from Earth, so it rises at sunset, stands highest at midnight and sets at sunrise. It falls close to the planet's nearest approach as well, which makes it the biggest and brightest that planet gets in the year.
    What are the equinoxes and solstices, exactly?
    The four instants at which the Sun reaches its furthest north, its furthest south, or crosses the celestial equator between the two. They are moments rather than days, and they are the same moment everywhere on Earth — which is why one of them can fall on a different date depending on your time zone.
    How close does a listed flyby come?
    Inside twenty lunar distances, which is about eight million kilometres. That is close by the standards of the Solar System and by no other standard at all: nothing on this list is a hazard, and the orbits are known accurately enough to say so well in advance.
    Do I need to say where I am?
    Not for the dates. An eclipse maximum, a shower peak or an opposition is the same instant everywhere. For whether the event clears your horizon at a sensible hour — and, for a solar eclipse, for whether you are standing inside a track a few hundred kilometres wide — the answer does depend on where you are, and the page will ask if you want it.
    How far ahead can any of this be predicted?
    Centuries, for anything driven by the positions of the Sun, Moon and planets: the ephemeris behind them holds up over far longer than a lifetime, and eclipse dates thousands of years out are routine. Meteor showers are the exception — the dates are firm and the strength is not, because it depends on how the dust happens to be distributed along the stream.
    Why do the times differ by a few minutes from other sources?
    Usually because a different thing is being timed. A shower peak is a broad maximum rather than an instant, and the hour quoted for it is where the Sun reaches a longitude the observing community has agreed on, not a measurement of that year's dust; an eclipse can be quoted at greatest eclipse or at mid-totality; a phase or an eclipse can be given in different time scales. Everything here comes from one ephemeris and is stated in Universal Time, so the events are at least consistent with each other.
    Can I get these into my own calendar?
    Yes. The next twelve months are published as a subscribable feed, filtered the way the page is when you ask for it, so the events appear in whatever calendar application you already use — and a subscription slides forward on its own as the window does.