UK Night Sky This Week

🌠 What to See in the UK Night Sky Tonight: Jupiter, Saturn and the Beehive

This week the UK night sky offers four things worth planning around: a 10%-lit crescent Moon crossing the Beehive Cluster from 04:00 BST on Tuesday 8 September, with Jupiter just 4° below it as dawn breaks; New Moon at 04:27 BST on Friday 11 September, which leaves every evening of the week moonless and gives the darkest skies of the month; Saturn rising around 20:25 BST each night and up until dawn, four weeks before its 4 October opposition; and the minor September epsilon Perseid meteor shower, peaking on Wednesday 9 September at roughly five to eight meteors an hour.

Last week's Venus–Spica conjunction has come and gone, and the pair are drifting apart low in the evening twilight. The sky now shifts its weight to the mornings and to the dark. There is no big set-piece conjunction this week, but there is something better for anyone with binoculars or a telescope: six consecutive nights with no moonlight in the evening at all.

Start early if you can. On Monday morning the 19%-lit Moon hangs between Jupiter and Mars in the east, making a near-straight line with the twin stars Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Look about an hour before sunrise, around 05:20 BST, and you will find Mars nearly 40° up with the Moon below it and Jupiter lower still, bright at magnitude −1.7 just above the horizon haze.

Tuesday morning is the one to set an alarm for. From 04:00 BST on 8 September the thin crescent, now only 10% lit, moves across the Beehive Cluster, M44, in Cancer. The Moon's bright edge leads, so the cluster's stars wink out one by one along the sunlit limb. The whole thing is only about 10° up in the east-north-east when it starts and the sky is too bright to follow by around 05:40, so you need a clear low horizon and binoculars or a small telescope. Jupiter sits 4° to the Moon's lower left for the whole show, which makes it easy to find. Later that day the Moon actually occults Jupiter, but from the UK that happens after both have set, so the dawn view is the one to have.

Then the Moon is gone. By Wednesday morning it is a 3% sliver barely 5° up near Regulus, and on Friday it is New. That gives every evening from Monday to Saturday a properly dark sky from the end of twilight at about 21:25 BST, and it is the best week of September to go after the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, or the ice giants near Saturn and the Pleiades. From a genuinely dark site, early risers can also try for the zodiacal light: a faint cone of light leaning up from the eastern horizon about 90 minutes before sunrise, which shows best around the equinox on moonless mornings like these.

Two smaller items. The September epsilon Perseids peak on Wednesday 9 September, a minor shower of five to eight meteors an hour at best, but with no Moon in the way, a couple of hours after midnight facing north-east is a decent bet for a few. And Venus is close to its brightest of the whole year at magnitude −4.4, though from the UK it sits under 8° above the west-south-west horizon half an hour after sunset. Catch it in that first hour or not at all, and note that next Monday 14 September the crescent Moon passes in front of it in broad daylight.

🌟 Planets Visible from the UK This Week

For background on every world in the Solar System, not just what's up this week, see our planets hub.

🌛 The Moon This Week

The Moon is a morning object all week, and a shrinking one. It rises around 01:50 BST on Monday as a 19% crescent, about 02:45 on Tuesday at 10%, and close to 04:00 on Wednesday at 3%, before reaching New Moon at 04:27 BST on Friday 11 September. Check tonight's Moon phase for the exact rise time where you are.

Those three mornings are the lunar highlights. Monday's crescent sits in a line with Castor and Pollux between Jupiter and Mars. Tuesday's crosses the Beehive Cluster from 04:00 BST with Jupiter 4° below, and shows strong earthshine, the ghostly glow of Earth-lit night side that photographs well with a few seconds' exposure. Wednesday's is a real challenge: 3% lit and only about 5° up in the east-north-east an hour before sunrise, 4.7° from Regulus. Binoculars help with all three.

For everyone else, what matters is what the Moon is not doing: it is not in the evening sky at all, and the six evenings from Monday to Saturday are the best of September for anything faint. The young crescent returns low in the west on Sunday 13 and Monday 14 September, when it sits beside Venus after sunset and, in daylight on the Monday, passes right in front of it. The Harvest Moon follows on 26 September.

🌌 Deep Sky Targets for UK Observers This Week

This is the week to go somewhere dark. With no Moon in the evening sky and astronomical darkness from about 21:25 BST, September puts the summer Milky Way straight overhead while the autumn showpieces climb in the east, which is the best of both seasons in one session. Our guide to binocular astronomy covers technique; here is where to point. Keep half an eye open for satellites too, as tonight's ISS passes are often the brightest thing crossing a dark sky.

• The Milky Way through Cygnus: straight overhead once darkness falls. From a reasonably dark site the band running through the Summer Triangle is obvious to the naked eye, and binoculars turn it into star fields you can sweep for an hour. Every evening this week works.
• M31, the Andromeda Galaxy: well up in the east by 22:00, a soft oval smudge two and a half million light years away. Naked-eye from dark sites, easy in binoculars from suburbia, and this is its best week until October.
• The Double Cluster in Perseus: two rich clumps of stars in a single binocular field, climbing in the north-east below the W of Cassiopeia. One of the finest binocular sights in the sky.
• The Helix Nebula, NGC 7293: a big, faint planetary nebula low in Aquarius, due south around midnight. It needs a dark sky, a wide field and averted vision, so a moonless September week is exactly when to try it with a small scope or big binoculars.
• M13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules: still well placed in the west in the late evening. A 130mm scope at 100× resolves its outer stars into a swarm of pinpricks.
• Albireo: the head of Cygnus and the loveliest double star in the sky: one amber, one sapphire-blue, split by any telescope at low power. The crowd-pleaser to end a session on.

🔔 Get Alerts for Clear Nights

📅 Night-by-Night Planner: 7 – 12 September 2026

Sunset falls from about 19:33 BST on Monday to 19:21 on Saturday, sunrise from 06:24 to 06:32 · The Moon is a morning crescent shrinking to New on Friday, so every evening is dark · All times BST and calculated for London

📖 Go Deeper