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.

[

Coming up

] SOONEST FIRST
SHOW
EVERYTHINGMOONPLANETSMETEOR SHOWERSECLIPSESFLYBYSSUN
+WHAT THE EIGHT KINDS ARE
  • Eclipses — solar and lunar, with where on Earth each 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

Pick a place and every event will say which hours are worth being outside for it. Until you do, nothing here is answered for anywhere in particular.

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.
[

September 2026

] 1 EVENT
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  • 23
    WED
    SUN--:--

    September equinox

    The Sun crosses back south over the celestial equator, day and night level up again, and the nights start getting longer in the north and shorter in the south.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

[

December 2026

] 1 EVENT
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  • 21
    MON
    SUN--:--

    December solstice

    The Sun reaches its furthest south: the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, and the shortest in the southern.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

[

March 2027

] 1 EVENT
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  • 20
    SAT
    SUN--:--

    March equinox

    The Sun crosses the celestial equator heading north, and day and night are very nearly equal length everywhere on Earth. Spring begins in the northern hemisphere and autumn in the southern.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

[

June 2027

] 1 EVENT
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  • 21
    MON
    SUN--:--

    June solstice

    The Sun reaches its furthest north, giving the northern hemisphere its longest day and its shortest, palest nights — and the southern hemisphere the long dark evenings that go with midwinter.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

[

September 2027

] 1 EVENT
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  • 23
    THU
    SUN--:--

    September equinox

    September equinox: the Sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night level up.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

[

December 2027

] 1 EVENT
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  • 22
    WED
    SUN--:--

    December solstice

    December solstice: the Sun reaches its furthest from the equator, and the year turns.

    Sun
    +WHAT TO EXPECT

    Nothing to see on the night. What it marks is the shape of the months either side: which way the nights are going, and how much dark you will have to work with.

6 events for the 18 months from today, of the kinds selected above. 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 26 close approaches come from NASA/JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, as they stood on 2026-08-25, and cover passes inside 20 lunar distances through 2028-03-27. 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.