Messier Objects Visible Tonight

Which Messier objects can you see tonight?

The Messier catalogue lists 110 of the finest star clusters, nebulae and galaxies in the sky, from the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula to the Whirlpool and Sombrero galaxies. This Messier objects visible tonight list works out, for your location and date, which of them climb high enough in a dark sky, when each is best placed, how high it gets and in which direction, and whether you need your eyes, binoculars or a telescope.

Tick Show all 110 objects to turn the page into a complete Messier objects list with numbers, NGC designations, types, constellations and magnitudes, and download it as a CSV file for your observing log. The Sun, Moon and darkness calculations are the same ones used by the planets visible tonight page, and everything is computed in your browser.

How to use the Messier Objects Visible Tonight

1. Choose a City, type Latitude, Longitude and Time zone, or press Use my location.
2. Pick the Night of date; Tonight sets it to the coming night.
3. Set Your sky (how light-polluted it is) and the Minimum altitude above your horizon.
4. Filter by Type or Equipment, and sort by best time, Messier number, brightness or altitude.
5. Read the summary (darkness hours and Moon), then the table: best time with altitude and compass direction, the visible window and what you need.

Messier Objects Visible Tonight features

How the list is worked out

Each object’s J2000 catalogue position is precessed to the date with the rigorous formulas in Jean Meeus’s Astronomical Algorithms, then converted to altitude and azimuth for your latitude and longitude every 10 minutes through the night, with standard atmospheric refraction. The Sun’s position from the same book decides when the sky is dark. An object is listed as visible tonight if it is at least your minimum altitude above a flat horizon at any time while the Sun is more than 18° down; its best time is the moment it is highest in that window.

Objects that never rise high enough at your latitude — the far-southern M7 from the UK, for example, or M81 and M82 from southern Australia — are marked “Never above”; objects near the Sun in the sky are marked “Up only in daylight” until the Earth’s orbit carries them into the night sky a few months later.

What the equipment rating means

The rating is a rule of thumb. It starts from the object’s integrated magnitude, adds an allowance for objects whose light is spread out (one magnitude for galaxies and the Crab Nebula, half a magnitude for nebulae) and adds your sky’s light pollution, from nothing at a dark rural site to three magnitudes in a city. Up to 4.5 counts as naked eye, up to 8 as binoculars, up to 10.5 as a small telescope of about 100 mm, and fainter as a larger telescope. Large, low-surface-brightness galaxies such as M33 and M101 are harder than their magnitudes suggest, and every object is harder near the horizon or under moonlight. The SQM to Bortle converter helps you choose the right sky setting.

Data and accuracy

• Positions, magnitudes, sizes and types are compiled from the SEDS Messier Database (Frommert & Kronberg) and cross-checked against a second tabulation; positions agree to better than 0.1°.
• Altitudes are accurate to a fraction of a degree, far better than the 10-minute time steps.
• A real horizon has trees and buildings; raise the minimum altitude if yours is blocked.
• Plot the objects among the constellations with the star chart.