The sky tonight
The Moon, the northern lights forecast and what to look for after dark, explained simply.
Updated Monday, October 5, 2026 at 15:21 UTC 2 views
Last quarter
33% of the Moon's face is lit, 23.8 days into its cycle.
Next full moon: around Monday, October 26
Next new moon: around Sunday, October 11
Northern lights
Highest expected Kp index in the next day: 4.7 of 9
Activity is a little raised. The northern lights are possible in Canada, Alaska, Iceland, northern Scandinavia and northern Scotland.
Meteor showers
- Draconids usually peak around October 8
- Orionids usually peak around October 21
- Leonids usually peak around November 17
- Geminids usually peak around December 13
For the best view, find somewhere dark, let your eyes adjust for 20 minutes and look up after midnight.
NASA picture of the day: NASA Science
A deep image of the Sombrero galaxy reveals surprises. M104 is named the Sombrero galaxy because, on shorter exposures, it looks like a hat. A key defining feature of this huge galaxy is a dark brim of dust that circles the disk galaxy's center. A much longer exposure, however, brings up a hairy past where a bright, hazy halo is revealed that extends well past the central disk and contains many unresolved stars. Surprisingly, in this stellar haze, structures can be seen that include a diagonal ring. These structures and tidal streams provide fresh evidence that M104 had a violent past and is surely the result of collisions and mergers of smaller galaxies. Light takes about 30 million years to reach us from the Sombrero galaxy, which fully spans about 150 thousand light years across. The featured image was taken over seven days in mid-2026 from Namibia.Your Sky Surprise: What picture did…
Questions people ask
What is the Kp index?
The Kp index runs from 0 to 9 and measures how disturbed Earth's magnetic field is. The higher it is, the further from the poles the northern lights can be seen. Kp 5 and above counts as a geomagnetic storm.
Why does the Moon have phases?
The Moon does not make its own light. As it orbits Earth every 29.5 days, we see different amounts of its sunlit half, from none (new moon) to all of it (full moon).
Data: NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center and NASA APOD. Moon times are calculated and accurate to about a day.
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