Stargazing forecast
Santa Cruz, CA
Fair viewing tonight: 44%. No clear stretch forecast.
Updated Friday 8:40 PM ET.
Viewing forecast
Dark 6:33 PM to 5:11 AM
Dark 6:32 PM to 5:11 AM
Brighter means clearer skies.
The Moon tonight
Where to look tonight
At 7:33 PM, an hour after full darkness. The edge of the circle is the horizon; the center is straight overhead.
- SaturnVisible in the southeast
- New HorizonsFar too faint to see, but there: in the southwest
- Voyager 1Far too faint to see, but there: in the west
- Voyager 2Below the horizon
- MercuryBelow the horizon
- MarsBelow the horizon
- JupiterBelow the horizon
- MoonBelow the horizon
- VenusBelow the horizon
Northern lights
The northern lights are very rarely seen this far south, even during the strongest storms.
Nearby cities tonight
- San Jose, CA48%, 26 miles
- Santa Clara, CA37%, 27 miles
- Sunnyvale, CA36%, 29 miles
- Salinas, CA33%, 29 miles
- Fremont, CA40%, 36 miles
More from space
Where Voyager, the planets and passing asteroids are right now, on Space Scoreboard
The viewing score is Star Scoreboard’s own measure: the clear-sky forecast through the hours of full darkness, based on National Weather Service cloud cover forecasts, reduced when a bright Moon is up. It doesn’t account for city lights. The Moon is calculated with standard astronomical formulas. Planet positions courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech; the aurora outlook is from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. Star Scoreboard is not affiliated with NASA, NOAA or the National Weather Service.