Today
May 22
- Transit: Io Transits Jupiter
Sky Tonight
Pick your location to see tonight's passes
Standout events for the next 7 days, all times UTC.
Today
May 22
Tomorrow
May 23
Sunday
May 24
Monday
May 25
Quiet sky
Tuesday
May 26
Wednesday
May 27
Thursday
May 28
Quiet sky
A short field guide to making the most of the next clear night.
Five planets are bright enough to see without any equipment: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Venus is the brilliant white “evening” or “morning star” — outshining everything except the Sun and Moon.
Jupiter is the next brightest, a steady creamy point. Mars glows distinctly red-orange when near opposition. Saturn looks pale yellow and steady. Mercury hugs the horizon at dusk or dawn and only appears for a few weeks at a time.
Airplanes blink with red and green navigation lights and crawl across the sky. Satellites move in a steady, silent line — no blinking — and cross from horizon to horizon in three to five minutes. The International Space Station is the brightest of them all, often outshining Venus.
The best window is the one to two hours after sunset or before sunrise: you're already in darkness, but satellites overhead still catch the Sun above the terminator.
The Moon is the single biggest factor in what you can see. A Full Moon floods the sky with light and washes out everything except the brightest stars and planets — beautiful for lunar viewing, frustrating for deep-sky.
The week around New Moon is the opposite: skies go genuinely dark, the Milky Way becomes visible from a rural site, and meteor showers pop. If you're planning a stargazing night, check the phase first and aim for the days closest to New Moon.
Astronomers rate skies on the Bortle scale, from class 1 (pristine wilderness, Milky Way casts shadows) to class 9 (inner city, only the Moon and a handful of stars visible). Most suburban skies sit around class 5 to 7 — fine for the Moon and planets, limiting for nebulae and galaxies.
Driving 30 to 60 minutes outside a major city often drops you two Bortle classes and reveals dramatically more. International Dark-Sky Places are the gold standard.
You don't need a telescope to start. A planisphere or sky-chart app gets you oriented; binoculars unlock the Moon's craters, Jupiter's four bright moons, and the Pleiades star cluster.
On SpaceOdysseyHub, our tools hub gathers pass predictors, sky maps, and converters; the interactive solar system lets you fly between planets and famous spacecraft to see what's overhead in context.
Six simple steps to catch humanity’s outpost overhead.
Pick your location at the top of this page. The "next pass" cards will tell you exactly when, where, and how high the ISS will rise tonight — no guesswork required.
Move away from streetlights and porch lamps. Aim for a clear horizon, especially toward the azimuth where the pass begins — buildings and trees can cut off the first minute of any pass.
Best viewing is 1–2 hours after sunset or before sunrise. The ISS only shines because it reflects sunlight, so you need a dark ground but a still-sunlit sky 400 km up.
It looks like a fast, bright star (magnitude −3 to −4 — brighter than Jupiter). Steady glow, no blinking. Aircraft blink and creep; satellites drift; the ISS glides.
Watch it rise from one horizon, climb high across the sky, then fade or vanish mid-flight. A sudden fade means it has entered Earth’s shadow — a quiet eclipse 250 miles up.
There are real humans up there right now. See who is on board on our crew counter. They probably won’t wave back, but it’s the thought that counts.
Quick reference for the vocabulary used across our pass cards, charts, and observing guides.