Search
Brazil
Antarctica
Argentina
Bolivia
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Guyana
French Guiana
Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
Uruguay
Venezuela
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Croatia
Denmark
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Finland
France
Greece
the Netherlands
Hungary
Ireland
Iceland
Italy
Luxembourg
Norway
Poland
Portugal
the United Kingdom
the Czech Republic
Sweden
Switzerland
Turkey
Bermuda
Canada
the United States
Greenland
Mexico
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
the Dominican RepublicTurkey
South Africa
Egypt
Australia
Fiji
New Zealand
Papua New GuineaIllustrative images. The pictures in this guide are illustrations based on the real place, not photographs, and may differ from it.
The sky at any place on Earth, with the Southern Cross, the Magellanic Clouds and the North Star, and where Earth sits within the Milky Way and the Universe.
Never setsRises and setsNever visible
The drawings are not to scale: the real distances are too large to fit on a screen.
Each place's sky is worked out from its latitude and each object's declination (its "latitude" on the sky). Months are the best for early-evening viewing.
The Milky Way is our galaxy: a disk of hundreds of billions of stars, gas and dust, about 100,000 light-years across. Because we are inside the disk, we see it edge-on, as a pale band that crosses the sky on dark nights.
The name comes from the ancient Greeks, who saw a trail of milk spilled by the goddess Hera. In many languages the band has similar names, and for Indigenous peoples of Brazil, such as the Tupis, it is the tapir’s path.
The Sun sits in a smaller arm of the galaxy, the Orion Arm, about 26,000 light-years from the center. It orbits the center at roughly 800,000 kilometers per hour and takes about 230 million years to complete one full revolution.
The center of the Milky Way lies in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius, where there is a black hole about 4 million times the mass of the Sun. It is also the brightest part of the band and the part that stands out most in photos.
The Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which contains dozens of galaxies. The Magellanic Clouds, two small galaxies that look like loose little clouds, are visible only from the southern hemisphere and were described to Europeans by 16th-century navigators.
The largest neighbor is Andromeda, 2.5 million light-years away, the most distant object visible to the naked eye. It and the Milky Way are approaching each other and could merge in a few billion years, but recent studies show that this is not yet certain.
What you see in the sky depends on your latitude. The farther south you are, the higher the south celestial pole appears, and the stars around it never set. The farther north you go, the higher the North Star appears; in the southern hemisphere it never appears.
The Southern Cross is the emblematic constellation of the south: it is visible across Brazil and is seen low on the horizon only up to about 25 degrees north latitude. The stars on Brazil’s flag show the sky over Rio de Janeiro on the morning of November 15, 1889, each one representing a state or the Federal District.
On the equator, as in Macapá, the two celestial poles lie on the horizon, and throughout the year you can see stars from both hemispheres.
As Earth orbits the Sun, the night sky changes with the months. In the southern summer, from December to February, Orion and the Three Marys (the Belt of Orion) are high in the early evening. In winter, from June to August, Scorpio dominates, near the center of the Milky Way.
In Brazil, the best time to photograph the brightest part of the Milky Way is from April to September, on moonless nights and far from city lights.
City lights wash out most stars: most people who live in large cities have never seen the Milky Way. That is why there are certified dark-sky places, protected against light pollution.
In Chile, the Elqui Valley has the first International Dark Sky Sanctuary, created in 2015, and observatories open to tourists. In New Zealand, the Tekapo region is a dark-sky reserve, and in the United States, Flagstaff was the world’s first dark-sky city. In Brazil, Chapada dos Veadeiros, Jalapão and the Lençóis Maranhenses are among the most beautiful skies.
Always tip: choose nights near the new moon, let your eyes adapt to the dark for about 20 minutes, and use your phone’s red light.
Even at the darkest sites, seeing the Milky Way is not guaranteed: it depends on clear skies, a night without a bright Moon and the time when it is high in the sky.
Places in the guide related to this topic.
Chile
Chile
Bolivia
New Zealand
Brazil
Brazil
Brazil
San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Tekapo, New Zealand
Vicuña, Chile
the United States
Spain
the United States
Sweden
Brazil
Macapá, Brazil
Country
It is our galaxy, a disk of hundreds of billions of stars about 100,000 light-years in diameter. Seen from inside, it appears as a pale band across the sky.
Because the ancient Greeks saw a pale band in the sky as a pathway of milk, linked to a myth about the goddess Hera. Lactic means ‘of milk.’
The Sun, with Earth, sits in the Orion Arm, about 26,000 light-years from the galaxy’s center, and takes roughly 230 million years to orbit it.
Yes, under a very dark sky, far from city lights and with no Moon. It appears as a whitish band crossing the sky.
From April to September, when the brightest part, toward Sagittarius and Scorpio, is high in the night sky. Prefer nights near the new moon.
Only near the equator and up to about 25 degrees north latitude, low on the horizon, as in Hawaii. In Europe and most of the United States it never appears.
They are two small galaxies neighboring the Milky Way that look like little clouds in the sky. They are visible mainly from the southern hemisphere and were named after the navigator Ferdinand Magellan.
They show the sky over Rio de Janeiro on the morning of November 15, 1889, the day of the Proclamation of the Republic, and each star represents a state or the Federal District.
