Clear-night date ideas: when the sky will actually be clear this week

Stargazing is a date that fails on cloud far more often than on cold. So the question is not “what should we look at” but “which night this week will actually be clear.” Here is the answer for 25 cities, refreshed every few hours, and what to do with a clear night when you get one.

Updated 16 September 2026.

Which night this week will actually be clear

Judged hour by hour: cloud cover under a quarter, no rain, wind under 15 mph, at least two of those hours in a row after 9 pm. That is a stricter test than a “clear” icon, which is why the list below says no more often than a weather app would.

Checked 4:51 pm; next check about 7:51 pm.

Not your city? Perfect Day can watch for a clear night over your own back garden, and tell you both.

Excuses to be outside after dark

A clear night is enough on its own, but a reason helps. These are the reliable ones. Peak dates shift by a day or two from year to year, so check the exact night before you plan around it.

• The Lyrids, around the third week of April.
• The Eta Aquariids, early May, best in the hours before dawn.
• The Perseids, around the second week of August: the one everyone knows, on warm nights, with the most meteors of the year for most people.
• The Orionids, around the third week of October.
• The Leonids, mid-November.
• The Geminids, around the middle of December: cold, and often the best shower of the year if the night is clear.
• A full moon, any month. It rises around sunset, so a full moon rising is a sunset date that goes on afterwards. Find the east side of something high.
• The aurora, only when a geomagnetic storm is forecast; at mid-latitudes that is rare and cannot be planned far ahead. NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center publishes the forecast (swpc.noaa.gov); when it is high and the night is clear, go somewhere dark to the north.

How to do it

1. Find the darkest place you can reasonably get to. Ten minutes out of a city centre halves the sky glow; a park with trees between you and the streetlights is often enough.
2. Give your eyes twenty minutes. Phones off, or as dim and red as they go. The sky fills in as you wait; the waiting is the date.
3. Bring more than you think. A blanket to lie on and one to lie under; a flask; something to eat. Lying down is the trick — it turns a stiff neck into the whole sky.
4. Know one thing to point at. The Plough and how to find the North Star from it; Orion in winter; the Summer Triangle in summer. One is plenty. Nobody is checking.
5. Go late enough. Most showers are better after midnight, when your side of the Earth faces into the stream. A clear night from nine is the start, not the show.

For the serious version

If you want more than “clear or not” — transparency, seeing, moon phase, the hour-by-hour score — ClearSkys is a free stargazing forecast that, in its own words, tells you whether tonight's sky will be clear enough to stargaze, scoring the conditions from 0 to 100 by the hour for any location. It is the deep tool. Perfect Day is the layer on top: it does not score the sky, it watches the week for the clear night you described and tells you both, days ahead, which night to keep. Use both.