The Best Time to Go Stargazing: the Moon, the Month and the Hour

The best time to go stargazing is a clear night within a few days of the new moon, once full darkness has fallen, an hour or two after sunset. For the Milky Way’s bright core, the best months are May to July at nine of the ten places compared on this site; in the Canadian Rockies the long nights from autumn to spring are better.

Check Teide stargazing dates →

Pick the month and the place in the month picker.

The moon decides the week

A full moon lights the sky enough to hide the Milky Way and most faint galaxies. In the days either side of a new moon, the moon is thin and sets with the sun or rises near dawn, and the sky is as dark as it gets.

Book within about three days of a new moon. Each destination page on this site lists the next new moons in local dates for its observing site, computed for that place: a new moon late in the evening by UTC can fall on the next date in New Zealand.

The moon is not wasted on a telescope tour, though. Its craters are one of the best telescope targets there is, and some photographers prefer a little moonlight on the landscape.

The month decides what you see

The bright core of the Milky Way, the part in Sagittarius that photographs show, is only up after dark for part of the year. At every place on this site except Banff and Jasper it stands at least 20° high for an hour or more of full darkness somewhere between February and October, and longest from May to July.

Computed with JPL DE421 via Skyfield for each observing site, checked October 2026.

The further south you are, the higher the core climbs: in the Atacama, at Lake Tekapo and in the Pinnacles it passes close to overhead in June and July, when the nights there are long. In Utah and the Canadian Rockies it stays low on the southern horizon.

Outside the core season the sky is not empty. The months from November to January bring Orion, the Pleiades and, in the south, the Magellanic Clouds.

The hour decides how dark

The sky is fully dark only when the sun is 18° below the horizon, the end of astronomical twilight. That comes a little over an hour after sunset in the tropics, and two hours or more at higher latitudes around midsummer. Around midsummer in Banff and Jasper, it never happens: the sky stays in twilight all night.

Most tours time the night for this: sunset first, then the telescopes when the sky goes dark. The month chart on each destination page shows the hours of full darkness for every month.

Is stargazing better in winter?

In the northern hemisphere, winter nights are longer, which suits Orion, the Pleiades and the other winter constellations. The Milky Way’s core, though, is a summer sight there. So: better for hours of darkness, worse for the core.

The meteor showers

Two of the strongest showers each year peak around mid-August (the Perseids) and mid-December (the Geminids). A shower is best when its peak falls near a new moon. The night calendar on each destination page lists the next shower peaks for that site with a moon label, computed from the shower’s established solar longitude.

The worst times to go

A full moon week, the hour after sunset, and a cloudy night. Cloud matters most: no tour can see through it. Each destination page reads tonight’s cloud forecast for the observing site, and many tours move you to another night. Check the cancellation policy on the listing before you book.

For what to pack once you have the date, see what to wear stargazing.