Almanac
of the visible sky.

Twenty suns, ranked by how brightly they burn in Earth's sky — a matter of true luminosity crossed with plain distance. Sirius is not the largest star known, merely the nearest bright one. Height above the line and dot size both read as magnitude; rest a pointer, or a finger, on any point for its name and the years its light has spent in transit.

* Apparent magnitude, unaided eye, epoch 2000.0 — lower is brighter. Sirius outshines Fomalhaut by a factor of roughly nine. Distances given in light-years, rounded to three figures.

Four worlds, two hundred and eighty-five confirmed satellites between them, and the count is not finished. Each dot below is a named or numbered moon, tallied as of the most recent survey and poured in on arrival — watch the numeral catch up.

* Counts shift as observatories confirm new discoveries and reclassify old ones; Saturn overtook Jupiter for the first time in 2023, after a single batch of 62 new finds.

The Moon's shadow keeps a schedule of its own. Fourteen solar eclipses fall across the next fifteen years — several grazing the poles, one lingering over the Sahara for six minutes and twenty-three seconds, the longest anyone alive will see until 2114. The hairline marks this instant, read from your own clock.

→ drag to see the full band, 2026–2040

* Types and paths per long-range ephemeris. Total eclipses in gold, annular in teal. “Now” and days-to-next are computed live from the visitor's system clock.

Light is fast, not instant. What you see of the Moon left it 1.3 seconds ago; the Sun's light is eight minutes and twenty seconds old on arrival; Neptune's has been travelling since well before your coffee cooled — just over four hours. The pulse below sets out from the centre on loop, lighting each ring as it arrives.

* Travel times vary with orbital position; figures given are mean Earth-object separations. Mars and Jupiter are marked “avg.” — light from Mars alone can take anywhere from 3 to 22 minutes.