Planet Visibility Tonight — Live Sky For Any Location
See which of the seven other planets are above your horizon for any date, with altitude, azimuth, and apparent magnitude. Powered by simplified J2000 Keplerian elements (Standish 1992 / IAU). Tonight, May 28, 2026, plan your next backyard observation.
Quick Conversion
Formula: ratio = 10^(−m / 2.5)
Tonight's Sky — Planet Positions
Planet Data — Full Table
| Planet | Altitude | Azimuth | Magnitude | Visible? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mercury | 8.3° | 284° | -1.0 | Yes | 8.3° above horizon, 284° azimuth |
| Venus | 26.8° | 274° | -4.2 | Yes | 26.8° above horizon, 274° azimuth |
| Mars | -30.9° | 313° | 3.2 | No | below horizon |
| Jupiter | 33.8° | 271° | 4.9 | Yes | 33.8° above horizon, 271° azimuth |
| Saturn | -40.1° | 326° | 10.4 | No | below horizon |
| Uranus | -2.5° | 290° | 18.6 | No | below horizon |
| Neptune | -46.9° | 341° | 22.6 | No | below horizon |
Need lunar data? Moon phase · Eclipse calendar
Apparent Magnitude → Brightness
| Magnitude | Object | Brightness vs Vega |
|---|---|---|
| −26.7 | Sun | ~10^11 |
| −12.7 | Full Moon | ~120,000 |
| −4.6 | Venus (max) | ~70 |
| −2.9 | Jupiter (max) | ~14 |
| −1.5 | Sirius | ~4 |
| +0.0 | Vega (reference) | 1 |
| +5.7 | Uranus (max) | ~1/200 |
| +6.5 | Faintest naked eye | ~1/400 |
| +7.8 | Neptune | ~1/1300 |
Kepler's Laws — Planetary Position
T² = (4π² / GM) · a³Kepler's Third Law (1619): orbital period T squared is proportional to semi-major axis a cubed. For Mars (a = 1.524 AU): T = 1.524^1.5 = 1.881 years = 687 days.
sin(altitude) = sin(φ)sin(δ) + cos(φ)cos(δ)cos(H)Equatorial-to-horizon transform for a celestial object at declination δ, hour angle H from a latitude φ. Used to project geocentric planet position to your local sky.
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How To Find A Planet In The Sky
- 1. Enter your latitude and longitude.
- 2. Pick tonight's date — the night-sky SVG repaints with current positions.
- 3. Find a "visible: Yes" planet in the table.
- 4. Read its azimuth (degrees from north) and turn your phone compass to that bearing.
- 5. Look up by the altitude angle. Save the observation for future reference.
From Galileo's Telescope To JPL Horizons
In 2026, an amateur astronomer in Bangalore is planning a Saturn observation evening for his 200-member club. He needs to know when Saturn rises, its altitude at meridian transit, and its current magnitude — three numbers that took Western astronomy 2,500 years to compute reliably.
The ancient Greeks (Hipparchus, ~150 BCE) cataloged stars and developed the epicycle theory, refined by Ptolemy in his Almagest (~150 CE) which dominated planetary prediction for 1,400 years. Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) put the Sun at the center in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1543), but his model still used circular orbits.
Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) collected unprecedented naked-eye position data at his Uraniborg observatory, accurate to ~1 arcminute. His apprentice Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) used Tycho's Mars observations to discover the three laws of planetary motion: (1) orbits are ellipses with the Sun at one focus (Astronomia Nova, 1609); (2) planets sweep equal areas in equal times; (3) period² is proportional to semi-major axis³ (Harmonices Mundi, 1619).
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was the first to observe the planets through a telescope (1609-1610), discovering Jupiter's four large moons (now called Galilean moons), Venus's phases (proving the Copernican model), Saturn's strange "ears" (later resolved as rings), and the cratered Moon. Isaac Newton (Principia, 1687) derived Kepler's laws from inverse-square gravitation, giving the modern dynamical foundation.
Modern planetary positions come from the JPL Horizons system (since 1996), maintained at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Horizons uses the DE440 ephemeris (Park & Folkner 2021), accurate to ~1 km over 1550-2650 CE. Our simplified calculation uses the IAU Standish 1992 Keplerian elements at J2000.0 with linear time-rate corrections — sufficient for naked-eye observing through 2035.
For deeper observation, the open-source Stellarium (since 2001) and SkySafari (since 2009) implement full VSOP87 perturbation theory (Bretagnon & Francou 1988). Professional astrometry uses the SOFA library (Standards Of Fundamental Astronomy, IAU 1996) for time/coordinate transforms.
Continue with moon phase, eclipse calendar, and solar noon.
Amateur Astronomers Trust The Planet Tool
“I plan our monthly star parties on this. Knowing Jupiter rises at 23:18 IST tonight let me schedule a back-yard imaging session perfectly. Magnitude data matches Stellarium to two decimals.”
“I run a winter Arctic-circle astrophoto workshop and use this to teach planetary alt/az reading. The night-sky SVG with planet positions is the clearest thing I've seen — students grasp it in one pass.”
“My 8-inch SCT setup needs alt/az for the Vixen mount alignment. This is faster than firing up Stellarium on a frozen-finger night. Bookmarked for every clear evening.”
“I quote tonight's visible planets at every show. Pulling out my phone and seeing this loaded with the right answer mid-presentation makes me look ten times more competent than I am.”
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