Planet Visibility Calculator

Enter your date and location and the table lists every naked-eye planet — Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn — with its rise, transit and set time, altitude and brightness. Any planet that is above the horizon during the dark hours and far enough from the Sun is visible to the naked eye; the visibility column rates each one excellent, good or poor.

Jupiter is visible whenever it is above the horizon in a dark sky, which the rise and set times tell you. It is at its best — up all night and brightest — around opposition, listed on the Event Calendar tab. At about magnitude −2 it is the brightest point in the sky after Venus, so it is unmistakable to the naked eye and shows its moons in binoculars.

Check Saturn's rise and transit times to know when it is up, then look toward its position at the listed altitude. Saturn shines a steady pale gold at about magnitude 0 to 1, brighter than most stars and not twinkling. It is best near opposition; binoculars hint at its oval shape and a small telescope reveals the rings clearly.

Opposition is when a superior planet — Mars, Jupiter or Saturn — sits directly opposite the Sun in our sky. The planet rises at sunset, is up all night, and is at its closest to Earth and therefore its brightest. Opposition is the single best time of the year to observe that planet, which is why the Event Calendar highlights it.

Planet positions use NASA/JPL low-precision Keplerian elements, accurate to a few arcminutes between 1800 and 2050 — far finer than the naked eye can see. Rise and set times are good to within a couple of minutes. The model ignores atmospheric extinction and light pollution, so a planet very low on the horizon will be harder to see than its numbers imply.

Latitude and longitude are in decimal degrees (north and east positive). Times are shown in your browser's local time zone, magnitudes in the standard astronomical scale where smaller is brighter, and altitudes in degrees above the horizon. Your date, location and planet choice are encoded in the page URL, so copying the link shares the exact view with anyone. Dark-sky sampling uses the Sun below −18°, from astronomical dusk to dawn. Continuous daylight or twilight has no astronomical dark-sky window; continuous astronomical night uses the selected 24-hour day. Clocks use the browser zone’s UTC offset at midnight on the selected date, held fixed for that calculation. They are not the observing location’s civil time and do not switch offsets during a night crossing a daylight-saving transition.