Best nights to stargaze — next 7 days
Pick a location and we’ll tell you the best nights to head out over the next week, plus which planets, meteor showers, and satellite passes you’ll actually be able to see.
Where are you watching from?
Tonight at a glance
Best nights — next 7 days
What you can see tonight
Planets above the horizon
Active meteor showers
Bright constellations this season
ISS passes — next 3 days
How the score works
Each night is rated out of 100 based on three things that make or break a stargazing trip: how cloudy it’ll be during full darkness (weighted most), how much moonlight is washing out the sky, and whether any meteor showers are peaking. Anything above 70 is a good night; 85+ is excellent. Get away from city lights if you can.
Chasing the southern lights instead? The night score above covers cloud, moonlight and meteors but not geomagnetic activity. Our live aurora forecast for New Zealand tracks tonight's Kp index, solar wind and cloud, with city by city guidance on what it takes to see the aurora australis from where you are.
Meteor Shower Guides
Each of the eight major annual meteor showers has its own viewing guide, with peak dates, where to look from New Zealand, tips for getting the best view, and the science behind each one. The live forecast panel above appears on every guide page too — so you can check cloud, Moon and darkness for any future peak date directly from the shower you care about.
- Geminids Meteor Shower — Peaks 13–14 December. The richest shower New Zealand sees all year — up to 120 meteors per hour at a dark site.
- Eta Aquariids Meteor Shower — Peaks 5–6 May. Pre-dawn shower from Halley's Comet debris; Southern Hemisphere sees it better than the north.
- Southern Delta Aquariids — Peaks 29–30 July. A Southern Hemisphere specialty — radiant passes nearly overhead on peak night.
- Orionids Meteor Shower — Peaks 21–22 October. The second annual shower from Halley's Comet. Fast meteors, often with glowing trails.
- Leonids Meteor Shower — Peaks 17–18 November. The fastest meteors of any annual shower, famous for rare once-a-century storms.
- Lyrids Meteor Shower — Peaks 22–23 April. Modest from NZ but the oldest recorded meteor shower — 2,700 years of observations.
- Quadrantids Meteor Shower — Peaks 3–4 January. Strong worldwide but a tough catch from NZ — radiant barely clears the northern horizon.
- Perseids Meteor Shower — Peaks 12–13 August. Famous in the Northern Hemisphere but nearly invisible from New Zealand.