Small, exact tools for the questions that come up before you drive somewhere dark. Every one of them runs in your browser, works from a ZIP code or a city, and answers for your location rather than for somewhere vaguely nearby.
Sunset is not darkness. Enter a ZIP code and get the moment the sky goes genuinely dark where you are, with the moon’s interference folded in rather than ignored.
Check tonightWhich planets clear ten degrees tonight and the hours each one is up, drawn on your own horizon, plus the same moment seen from above the solar system.
See tonight’s planetsEvery solar and lunar eclipse through 2050, with what each one actually looks like from your address and how much of the sun goes.
Find your next eclipseWhen the core is up in a dark, moonless sky where you live, every night of the year, plus the bright stretches of the band that are worth looking at when the core is gone.
Find your seasonBortle class and sky brightness for anywhere on Earth, with our own SQM meter readings laid over the satellite data, which is honest about what satellites miss.
Open the mapThe nine classes explained by what you can genuinely see at each one, with the SQM numbers behind them instead of the usual vague adjectives.
Read the scaleKnowing that the sky goes properly dark at 9:14pm and that Saturn is up all night only pays off if you are standing somewhere the sky can keep up. That part is a place, and it is usually closer than people assume.
Learn how to find dark skies near youBuilt by Dark Sky Dispatch. If one of these ever disagrees with what you see out of the window, tell us: every tool here is checked against professional ephemerides before it ships, and we would rather hear about it than not.