What planets can I see tonight?
Which planets are up after dark tonight, when to look, which way to face and how bright each one is, worked out for your location.
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The sky through the night
How to tell a planet from a star
Planets look like bright stars, so it helps to know what gives them away.
They shine steadily. Stars twinkle because they are points of light; planets show a tiny disk, so the air's shimmer averages out. Very low in the sky, even planets flicker.
They are among the brightest points in the sky. Venus and Jupiter outshine every star, and Mars and Saturn are as bright as the brightest stars.
They stay near one line across the sky, the ecliptic, which is the path the Sun and Moon follow too. All the planets orbit in nearly the same flat plane, so from Earth they line up along it.
They move. Over a week or two a planet shifts against the stars around it. The ancient Greeks called them "wanderers" for this reason, which is where the word planet comes from.
Which planets can you see without a telescope?
Five planets are easy to see with just your eyes: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. People have watched them for thousands of years. Uranus is right at the limit of eyesight and only shows up from a very dark site if you know exactly where to look. Neptune always needs a telescope.
Binoculars add a lot. Held steady, they show Jupiter's four largest moons as tiny points of light beside the planet, and their positions change from night to night. A small telescope shows Saturn's rings and the phases of Venus.
Evening planets and morning planets
Mercury and Venus orbit closer to the Sun than Earth does, so from here they never stray far from it. You see them in the west after sunset or in the east before sunrise, never in the middle of the night. Venus can get about 47° from the Sun, which is why it can shine for hours as the "evening star" or "morning star". Mercury never gets more than about 28° away, so it is always low in twilight and easy to miss.
Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune orbit outside Earth's orbit, so they can be anywhere along the ecliptic, including opposite the Sun. When a planet is opposite the Sun it rises at sunset, is up all night and is at its brightest. When it is on the far side of the Sun it is lost in the glare for weeks or months.
Tips for planet watching
Start about 45 minutes after sunset, when the sky is dark enough for planets but Mercury and Venus haven't set yet.
Find a spot with a low, open horizon in the direction given above. Buildings and trees hide planets that are low in the sky.
Planets are sharpest when they are high. Near the horizon you look through much more air, which blurs and dims them.
City lights don't stop you seeing the bright planets. They wash out faint stars far more than planets.
How this is calculated
Positions come from the Astronomy Engine library, calculated in your browser for tonight's date and your location, including the bending of light by the atmosphere near the horizon. A planet counts as visible when it is at least 5° above the horizon while the Sun is at least 6° below it, which is when the sky is dark enough for planets to stand out. Brightness is given as magnitude, where lower numbers are brighter: the faintest stars you can see from a dark site are about magnitude 6. Mercury and Venus are listed as not visible when they are within 10° of the Sun.