# What Is in the Sky Tonight? Relearning to Look Up

> What is in the sky tonight, seen from an ordinary city balcony, is a short list. Almost nobody is taught it any more. It takes one evening to learn.

By Ivan Akselrot. Published 2026-10-20. Category: Skywatching. Tags: stargazing, night sky, light pollution, planets, constellations. 11 min read.
Canonical: https://blog.spaceradar.ai/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/

At 4:31 on the morning of 17 January 1994, an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 threw Los Angeles out of bed and switched it off. The power failed across the city. People stood in the street in the dark, waiting for the next aftershock, and some of them looked up.

Then the phones began to ring at Griffith Observatory, on its hill above Hollywood. The callers wanted to know why the sky looked so strange, and whether it had something to do with the earthquake. Ed Krupp, the observatory’s director, has told the story ever since. Nothing was wrong with the sky. With the lights out, the people of Los Angeles were seeing the stars, and they did not recognise them.

This piece is about what those callers had lost, and about how little it takes to get a working part of it back. Most people alive have never seen the Milky Way from the place where they live. But the question people really type into a search box, *what is in the sky tonight*, has a short answer even from a balcony in the middle of a city, and it can be learned in an evening. I spent mine with [Space Radar](https://www.spaceradar.ai/), a free live map of the sky and of everything in orbit, set to a balcony in Tel Aviv on a moonless night in October 2026.

![The evening sky over Tel Aviv on 12 October 2026 with Saturn above the eastern horizon and the constellation figures drawn in](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-01-evening-sky-tel-aviv.jpg)
*Tel Aviv, 12 October 2026, 20:45, looking east-south-east. The one bright point in this whole stretch of sky is not a star: it is Saturn, 1.3 billion kilometres away.*

## The street lamp that erased the Milky Way

In 2016 a team led by the Italian physicist Fabio Falchi published [a world atlas of artificial night-sky brightness](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600377): satellite data on the light we send upwards, checked against sky-brightness measurements taken from the ground. Its numbers are still the ones everybody quotes. More than 80 per cent of humanity lives under a light-polluted sky. The Milky Way, our own galaxy seen edge-on from the inside, is hidden from more than a third of the people on Earth, including 60 per cent of Europeans and nearly 80 per cent of North Americans.

The mechanism is ordinary. A street lamp, a billboard, a floodlit car park each send part of their light sideways and upwards. The air scatters it, and the sky over a town glows like a dimly lit ceiling. The stars do not go out. They are outshone, the way a candle is outshone when somebody switches on the main light.

![The night side of the Earth from space, with Europe, North Africa and the Middle East picked out in city lights](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-05-earth-at-night.jpg)
*Every glow here is a town, and the part of its light that reaches orbit is light that lit nothing on the ground. This is what the atlas measures.*

And the ceiling is getting brighter. In 2023 Christopher Kyba and his colleagues [analysed 51,351 observations](https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2302/) sent in between 2011 and 2022 by volunteers who simply went outside and compared the stars they could see with a set of charts. The stars were vanishing at a rate that matches a sky brightening by 7 to 10 per cent every year, far faster than satellites had suggested. Kyba put it in terms of one childhood.

- **250 → 100** A child born where 250 stars are visible would see only about 100 of them from the same spot by the age of eighteen.

You can watch the effect without leaving your chair. The two pictures below are the same patch of south-western sky over Tel Aviv at the same minute, drawn first as a city centre shows it and then as it looks from a dark place. Nothing was added to the second one. It is what the first one is hiding. To do the same for your own town, [see your sky from a city, a town’s edge and a dark place](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=a-dark-sky&stop=3).

**Fly there in the 3D map:** [See your sky from a city, a town’s edge and a dark place](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=a-dark-sky&stop=3)

![The south-western sky from a city centre above a skyline: an orange glow along the horizon and only two bright stars, Vega and Altair, with the constellation figures drawn in](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-03-city-sky.jpg)
*From the city centre. The constellation lines are drawn by the map; the sky itself offers Vega, Altair and very little else.*

![The same south-western sky from a dark place: thousands of stars and the glow of the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-04-dark-sky.jpg)
*The same sky, the same minute, from a dark place. The stars lie thickest along the Milky Way, which runs from Vega and Altair down to Sagittarius on the horizon.*

## What survives the glow is a short list

Here is the consolation. The brightest things in the sky are bright enough to beat any street lamp, and there are few enough of them to learn by name.

From a truly dark site the unaided eye can pick out roughly 2,500 stars at one time. From the centre of a large city the count falls to [a dozen or two](https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/206-How-many-stars-can-you-see-at-night-). That sounds like a loss, and it is, but it is also a gift to a beginner: the city has deleted everything except the landmarks.

The first landmarks are the planets. Five of them can be seen without a telescope, and on a given night some of those are up and some are not. The trick for telling a planet from a star is old and reliable: stars twinkle and planets, mostly, do not. A star is so far away that its light arrives as a single point, which moving air pushes about. A planet is a tiny disc, and a disc holds steady.

> The city has deleted everything except the landmarks.

The second trick is that the planets all keep to one line across the sky, the same path the Sun took during the day. Find one and the others are somewhere along it.

![Space Radar’s Tonight panel for Tel Aviv, listing the next satellite pass and the night’s brightest sights with their magnitudes, beside the evening sky with Saturn labelled](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-02-tonight-panel.jpg)
*The map’s answer for one balcony on one night: the next satellite pass, then the night’s best by brightness. Magnitude runs backwards: the lower the number, the brighter the object, so Jupiter at −1.9 outshines every star in the sky.*

On my October evening the map’s answer for Tel Aviv was three planets. Saturn was already climbing in the east as the sky went dark, and would stand highest, 60 degrees up in the south, a few minutes before midnight. Jupiter and Mars would not rise until the small hours and were best just before dawn. The Moon, a two-day-old sliver, had set before the sky was dark. That list changes week by week, which is why it is worth asking again: [see which planets are up tonight](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=planets-tonight), each in turn and then from your own street.

**Fly there in the 3D map:** [See which planets are up tonight](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=planets-tonight)

![Saturn and its rings seen from close by, lit from the side, with stars behind](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-08-saturn.jpg)
*What that steady yellowish point is. The rings reach 80,000 kilometres out from the planet and are in places only about ten metres thick; a small telescope shows them.*

## Four minutes of people

One light in the evening sky behaves like nothing else. It appears low in the west, steady and white, with no flashing lights. It crosses the whole sky in a few minutes and then, often, fades out in mid-air before it reaches the far horizon.

That is the International Space Station, and [it can be followed live](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#at=sat-25544). It flies a little over 400 kilometres up, a four-hour drive if the road went straight up, at about 28,000 kilometres an hour, and laps the planet roughly every hour and a half. You see it only near dusk and dawn, for a plain geometric reason: you have to be standing in the dark while the station, far above you, is still in sunlight. When it fades in mid-sky, it has just flown into the Earth’s shadow. For the people on board, that was a sunset.

![The International Space Station above the Earth with Space Radar’s live card showing its height and speed](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-06-iss.jpg)
*The station’s height and speed, worked out live from its published orbit. NASA’s own description of a pass: like a very bright star moving across the sky, except that it does not blink or change direction.*

A pass is the easiest wonder in astronomy. It needs no dark site, no equipment and no patience, only the time and the direction, which [NASA’s Spot the Station](https://www.nasa.gov/spot-the-station/) or any pass predictor will give you. The other satellites are harder. In the hour after sunset you may notice faint, steady points sliding between the stars. There are thousands of them now, and almost all are too dim for a city sky.

## The sky your great-grandmother could read

For most of history, knowing the sky was not a hobby. It was the clock, the calendar and the compass.

Around 700 BC the Greek farmer-poet Hesiod told his brother when to work: begin the harvest when the Pleiades rise, and the ploughing when they set. Jewish law still defines the end of the day by observation. The Talmud says that night has come when three medium-sized stars can be seen, a rule that takes for granted that anybody can step outside and judge the stars for themselves. And for sailors in the northern hemisphere the height of the Pole Star above the horizon simply *was* their latitude.

![The winter evening sky over Tel Aviv looking south-east: Orion with Betelgeuse and Rigel, Sirius below it, Procyon, Gemini, and bright Jupiter low in the east](/media/what-is-in-the-sky-tonight/04-10-winter-sky.jpg)
*The same balcony three months later, on 10 January 2027 at 21:00. Orion’s three belt stars point down to Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The brighter light in the east is not a star: Jupiter.*

The method they all used is still the best one. Nobody memorises the sky. You learn one figure and step from it to the next, the way you learn a new city from a single street. Orion’s belt points one way to Sirius and the other way towards Aldebaran and the Pleiades. The two end stars of the Plough point to the Pole Star. The 88 constellations on a modern chart were agreed by astronomers only in 1922, but the paths between them are thousands of years old. If you want a guide for the first walk, [take the tour of the constellations](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=the-constellations).

**Fly there in the 3D map:** [Take the tour of the constellations](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=the-constellations)

## The one pollution that leaves at the speed of light

There is one thing to be said for light pollution. It has no residue. Carbon stays in the air for centuries and plastic stays in the sea. Shade a lamp or switch it off, and its share of the glow is gone before your hand leaves the switch.

> Shade a lamp or switch it off, and its share of the glow is gone before your hand leaves the switch.

That is why the dark is coming back in places. [DarkSky International](https://darksky.org/what-we-do/international-dark-sky-places/) has certified more than 200 Dark Sky Places in 22 countries as of 2026: parks, reserves and whole towns that have agreed to aim their lamps at the ground, keep them warm in colour and no brighter than they need to be. The Ramon Crater in Israel’s Negev desert became the first in the Middle East in 2017. None of these places is unlit. They light the pavement and leave the sky alone.

## Ten minutes tonight

Go outside about an hour after sunset. Stand with the nearest lamp behind you, and put the phone in your pocket: the eye needs twenty to thirty minutes to reach full night vision, and a single bright screen sends it back to the start. Ten minutes is enough to begin.

Look for the brightest light that does not twinkle. That is a planet. Then find one figure, any one, and one star in it whose name you will remember tomorrow. If the station is due, wait for it. All of this is laid out for your own place in [tonight’s sky from your street](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=tonight-from-your-street), and when you want the open sky itself, [the Tonight view](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#m=now) shows it for any hour you choose. It guesses your place from your time zone, so tell it your town first.

Then, on some clear weekend near new Moon, drive to a gap between the lights. The sky that puzzled Los Angeles in 1994 is still there every night, behind the glow, waiting for a power cut or for forty minutes in a car.

> **About Space Radar.** Space Radar is a free, open-source live 3D map of everything in orbit and of the sky from where you stand. It runs in a browser at [spaceradar.ai](https://www.spaceradar.ai/), with no account.

**Fly there in the 3D map:** [The planets tonight, from your street](https://www.spaceradar.ai/#trip=planets-tonight). Free, in your browser, no account.

## Questions people ask

### What planets are visible tonight?

Up to five can be seen without a telescope: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Which of them are up depends on the date and on where you are; in mid-October 2026, from mid-northern latitudes, Saturn is up all evening and Jupiter and Mars before dawn.

### How do I tell a planet from a star?

A planet shines with a steady light, while stars twinkle, most of all near the horizon. Planets also keep close to the path the Sun and Moon follow across the sky.

### Can I see the International Space Station without a telescope?

Yes. It looks like a very bright star that moves steadily across the sky for a few minutes, without flashing lights, and it is visible only within a few hours of sunset or sunrise.

### Why can I not see the Milky Way from my city?

It is still there, but the glow of artificial light scattered in the air outshines it. More than a third of humanity lives where it cannot be seen at all.

## Sources

1. [A world atlas of artificial night-sky brightness](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600377)
2. [Analysed 51,351 observations](https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2302/)
3. [A dozen or two](https://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/206-How-many-stars-can-you-see-at-night-)
4. [NASA’s Spot the Station](https://www.nasa.gov/spot-the-station/)
5. [DarkSky International](https://darksky.org/what-we-do/international-dark-sky-places/)
6. [Dus32w6mqcntr.cloudfront.net](https://dus32w6mqcntr.cloudfront.net)
7. [Earthquake.usgs.gov: executive](https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci3144585/executive)
8. [Nps.gov: connect](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nightskies/connect.htm)
9. [Discovermagazine.com: for our own good let there be dark 40401](https://www.discovermagazine.com/for-our-own-good-let-there-be-dark-40401)
10. [Arxiv.org: 1609.01041](https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.01041)
11. [Science.org: science.abq7781](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7781)
12. [Gfz.de: citizen scientists report global rapid reductions in the visibility of stars from 2011 to 2022](https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/citizen-scientists-report-global-rapid-reductions-in-the-visibility-of-stars-from-2011-to-2022)
13. [Earthsky.org: how many stars could you see on a clear moonless night](https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/how-many-stars-could-you-see-on-a-clear-moonless-night/)
14. [Cts.perseids.org](https://cts.perseids.org/read/greekLit/tlg0020/tlg002/perseus-eng2/375-385)
15. [Sefaria.org: Shabbat.35b](https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.35b)
16. [Jtsa.edu: babylonian talmud shabbat 35b](https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/babylonian-talmud-shabbat-35b/)
17. [Ru.wikipedia.org: Сочельник](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Сочельник)
18. [En.wikipedia.org: Pole star](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_star)
19. [Iau.org: constellations](https://www.iau.org/public/themes/constellations/)
20. [En.wikipedia.org: DarkSky International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DarkSky_International)
21. [Darksky.org: ramon crater named first international dark sky place in the mideast](https://darksky.org/ramon-crater-named-first-international-dark-sky-place-in-the-mideast/)
22. [Nps.gov: dark adaptation of the human eye and the value of red flashlights](https://www.nps.gov/articles/dark-adaptation-of-the-human-eye-and-the-value-of-red-flashlights.htm)
23. [Spaceradar.ai](https://www.spaceradar.ai)