UK Night Sky This Week

✨ This Week's Highlight: Mercury at Its Best — Greatest Elongation on 15 June

If you've been meaning to spot Mercury and never quite managed it, this is your week. Mercury reaches its greatest elongation — its maximum angular distance from the Sun in the evening sky — on Sunday 15 June, which means the days either side (this entire week) offer the best Mercury viewing of 2026. Look west-northwest 20–30 minutes after sunset (around 21:40–21:50 BST). Mercury is now a clear, bright naked-eye object in the twilight glow — no special equipment needed. Binoculars help, but your eyes are enough. It won't be this easy to find again until late in the year.

At the same time, the aftermath of last week's spectacular Venus-Jupiter conjunction adds to the planet spectacle. Venus and Jupiter are still remarkably close — they were just 0.4° apart on 9 June, and they open out slowly through the week. On Monday they're under 1° apart; by Sunday the gap has widened to around 3°, but they're still a striking pair in the western twilight. Venus is the dazzling one climbing higher; Jupiter the brilliant one sinking lower. Mercury sits below and to the right — three planets in one sweep of binoculars.

As an added bonus, the Moon fades to nothing by the end of the week (New Moon 15 June), giving genuinely dark late-evening skies from Thursday onwards — the best window for faint deep-sky objects since May. It all adds up to one of the best observing weeks of June.

🌟 Planets Visible from the UK This Week

🌛 The Moon This Week

This week the Moon is very much the stargazer's friend. Last Quarter falls on Monday 8 June at 06:01 BST — from that point the Moon is a shrinking waning crescent, rising later and later each morning, and essentially invisible in the evening sky by Thursday. New Moon follows on 15 June, so the nights of 11–14 June offer some of the darkest skies of early summer from UK locations.

On Monday and Tuesday, the Moon (Last Quarter, roughly half-lit) rises around midnight and is out of the way for most of the evening. By Wednesday and Thursday, it's a thin crescent rising around 02:00–03:00 BST — effectively absent for all normal stargazing hours. By Friday 12 June, the crescent is very thin (under 20% lit) and sets before midnight, leaving hours of genuinely dark sky. Saturday and Sunday are essentially moonless evenings — perfect for deep-sky work.

One thing to bear in mind for UK observers: we're approaching the summer solstice (21 June), so true astronomical darkness doesn't arrive until well after midnight even in southern England, and doesn't occur at all in Scotland. But from southern UK, you'll get a useful window of darker skies between about 00:30 and 03:00 BST on the best nights — and planets are perfectly visible in nautical twilight at any latitude throughout the week.

🌌 Deep Sky Targets for UK Observers This Week

This is one of the best deep-sky weeks of June: the Moon fades rapidly through the week and the sky from Thursday onwards is as dark as it gets before midsummer. From southern England you'll get genuine astronomical darkness late at night (roughly 00:30–03:00 BST from Thursday); from Scotland and northern England, bright twilight limits deep-sky work but the planets and brighter clusters are still rewarding. The New Moon on 15 June kicks off the best two-week deep-sky window of early summer.

• M13 — Great Hercules Globular Cluster — June is M13's best month. It transits high in the south around 23:00 BST, well-placed for UK observers. In binoculars it's a clearly non-stellar fuzz; in a small telescope it begins to resolve into stars at the edges. From southern England on Thursday–Sunday, the dark sky window around midnight makes it an outstanding target. One of the genuine showpieces of the night sky.
• M5 Globular Cluster in Serpens — rivalling M13 for beauty, slightly lower in the south, and arguably better resolved in a small telescope. High enough by 23:00 BST. A compact, brilliant ball of stars — often overlooked because M13 gets all the attention, but worth seeking out on the darker nights this weekend.
• The Summer Triangle — Vega, Deneb and Altair are now all clear of the horizon in the east by midnight. Vega blazes blue-white almost overhead from the UK; Deneb sits at the tail of Cygnus the Swan; Altair is flanked by its two companion stars. The Milky Way runs through the heart of the Triangle — look for it from darker southern sites on the moonless nights.
• Albireo (Beta Cygni) — one of the finest coloured double stars in the sky. A small telescope at modest magnification reveals a golden star paired with a vivid blue-white companion — the colour contrast is striking even to first-time viewers. Cygnus is well up in the northeast by 23:30 BST. A perfect Saturday or Sunday evening target.

🔔 Get Alerts for Clear Nights

📅 Night-by-Night Planner: 8–14 June 2026

Sunset ~21:20 BST · True darkness (S England only) from ~00:30 BST · All times BST · UK skies · Moon fades through the week

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🔭 What to use this week

This week's Mercury greatest elongation is best enjoyed with binoculars — they'll show it sharp against the twilight. Venus and Jupiter are also worth sweeping in the same binocular field. For Jupiter's moons or a closer look at Venus's crescent phase, a small telescope is ideal.

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