Tonight's sky
Where is the sky clearest tonight?
As of , the newest MET Norway forecast time among the six cities, the clearest best window tonight is in New York: to local time, with 0 percent cloud. Each row below has its own forecast time.
See tonight's sky for your place
What this means
- New York has the clearest best window of the 6 cities: 0 percent cloud from 22:00 to Tue 6 Oct 06:00 local time.
- Tromsø has no best window tonight on the viewing score.
- Of the 3 nights measured from sunset to sunrise, the longest is in Tokyo (12 h 22 min) and the shortest in Sydney (11 h 23 min).
- In New York, London and Tromsø the nights were already under way at the forecast time, so their pages give the rest of the night: 9 h 40 min until sunrise in New York, 4 h 52 min until sunrise in London and 1 h 48 min until sunrise in Tromsø.
- At 03:30 UTC on 6 October 2026 the Moon is a waning crescent, 22 percent lit, as seen from anywhere; the city pages give it at each city's own chart time, from 17 to 22 percent.
Cloud forecast: MET Norway's, not ours. Data from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute, shortened MET Norway, licensed under NLOD 2.0 and CC BY 4.0.
See also: tonight's sky in Pune, tonight's sky in New York, tonight's sky in London, tonight's sky in Tromsø, tonight's sky in Tokyo, tonight's sky in Sydney, the ISS today, aurora tonight, all live numbers right now, Moon phases, planet events, meteor showers.
Tonight in the six cities
| City | Tonight | Cloud on average | Best window | Moon (lit at the city's chart time) | ISS passes sunlit in a dark sky |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pune | to (12 h 07 min) | 11% | to , 8% cloud | 17% lit | 0 |
| New York | Already dark at the forecast time, to (9 h 40 min left) | 0% | to , 0% cloud | 22% lit | 0 |
| London | Already dark at the forecast time, to (4 h 52 min left) | 83% | to , no cloud forecast | 22% lit, up at the forecast time | 0 |
| Tromsø | Already dark at the forecast time, to (1 h 48 min left) | 100% | None | 22% lit, up at the forecast time | 0 |
| Tokyo | to (12 h 22 min) | 85% | to , 41% cloud | 18% lit | 0 |
| Sydney | to (11 h 23 min) | 68% | to , 6% cloud | 19% lit | 2 |
How these pages are made
- The night starts at the first sunset after MET Norway's forecast time for the city, or at the forecast time when the Sun has already set, and ends at the next sunrise. Sunrise and sunset are astronomy-engine's rise and set times (see the checks below). Where the Sun does not set or rise within 24 hours, the page says so.
- Each hour of the night gets a viewing score from 0 to 100, the live app's own: zero while the Sun is less than 6° below the horizon (-6°), more as the sky darkens to 18° below, less for a bright Moon that is up, and scaled by the share of sky MET Norway forecasts to be clear. The best window is the run of consecutive hours scoring 45 or more with the highest total.
- The Sun, Moon and planets are computed with the astronomy-engine library, whose documentation says its accuracy is always within 1 arcminute of results from NOVAS. Our tests compare this code's Sun and Moon rise and set times with the US Naval Observatory's tables for these six cities on the 2026 solstices and require agreement within 1 minute, and the Moon's phase with the Observatory's phase table. The planet positions are not compared with a second source.
- The polar chart shows stars brighter than magnitude 3.5 from the app's star catalogue and the stick figures of up to 12 bright constellations, placed from the catalogue's fixed positions without a correction for the slow drift of the sky (precession); the Moon and planets are placed for the moment shown.
- ISS passes come from the newest element set for the ISS in CelesTrak's data with the SGP4 model, the same code as the live app. A pass is listed when the ISS is at least 10° up; it is sunlit in a dark sky when sunlight falls on it while the Sun is more than 6° below the observer's horizon. We have not measured how far pass times drift as the element set ages, so treat them as approximate. Passes are not shown when the element set is more than 7 days old.
- Times on the city pages stay in each city's own time zone, because the findings, the sky chart and its heading are worked out for that local night; only the forecast time, given in UTC, may also be shown in your own time zone.
- Findings say "about the same" when a number is within 15 percent of what it is compared with.
- Everything is computed, not observed, and nothing here promises that anything will be seen: weather, haze, lights and your horizon decide that.
Questions
Which city has the clearest sky tonight?
New York, with 0 percent cloud in its best window in MET Norway's forecast. A forecast is not a promise of a clear sky.
Why are these six cities?
They are the places our collector fetches a cloud forecast for. The live app works out tonight's sky for any place, without the cloud forecast elsewhere.
Does the Moon look the same from every city?
Its phase is the same everywhere at the same moment; when it rises and sets, and how high it climbs, depend on the place.
Sources
- MET Norway Locationforecast. The hourly cloud forecast (total cloud cover for all heights). Data from The Norwegian Meteorological Institute, shortened MET Norway
- MET Norway licence. NLOD 2.0 and CC BY 4.0, as recorded in our source notes
- astronomy-engine. The MIT licensed library that computes the Sun, Moon and planets, and their rise and set times
- U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications API. The rise, set and phase tables our tests compare these calculations with
- CelesTrak current GP data. The ISS element set (NORAD 25544)
- satellite.js. The SGP4 code that turns the element set into positions