Golden Hour & Night Sky Planner

🌅 The Light Today

• Golden hour: 6:01pm - 6:38pm  (dawn 6:33am - 7:10am)
• Blue hour: 6:38pm - 7:06pm  (dawn 6:05am - 6:33am)
• Sun sets: 6:38pm at 270° W · rises 6:33am at 90° E

Overcast Sunset odds 20/100 · cloud low 2% / mid 0% / high 100%

Solid grey lid. The sun is not showing up for this one.

🌕 Moon & Darkness

A bright moon washes the sky out. Good for landscapes, bad for stars — and it shows you what is coming.

🌌 Deep Sky Tonight

• Milky Way core: Moonlit in season, but the moon will wash it out
• Aurora chance: Quiet Kp 3 · full space weather

Shoot the stars, but keep one ear open. Long exposures mean standing still in the dark for minutes at a time.

🔭 Stargazing Forecast Tonight Go

Genuinely good sky tonight. Set up early. Best window: 1am (82/100).

Seeing is how steady the air is (driven by the jet stream aloft—currently 76 km/h at 250hPa): it limits planetary detail. Transparency is how much haze dims faint galaxies. Dew is whether your optics fog up — bring a dew heater when it says High.

🔭 Telescopes & Mounts

Aperture shows you more; the mount decides whether you can photograph it. A cheap scope on a solid mount beats the reverse every night of the week.

• Budget 70–80mm refractor on an alt-az mount
  Moon, Saturn's rings, Jupiter's moons. Grab-and-go, no alignment ritual. Shop →
• Budget 6" or 8" Dobsonian reflector
  The most aperture per dollar ever made. Visual only — it will not track for photos. Shop →
• Mid Small apo refractor (61–80mm ED)
  The classic deep-sky imaging scope: wide field, sharp stars, light enough for a modest mount. Shop →
• Mid Maksutov / Schmidt-Cassegrain 5–8"
  Long focal length in a short tube — planets, lunar detail, double stars. Shop →
• Serious Computerized equatorial (EQ) mount
  Tracks the sky's rotation so stars stay points instead of streaks. The real purchase. Shop →
• Serious Autoguider + guide scope
  Corrects mount drift in real time and unlocks exposures past a couple of minutes. Shop →

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📷 Cameras for the Night Sky

Two different jobs: a normal camera shoots the landscape-plus-Milky-Way frames, a dedicated astro camera bolts to a telescope and stacks faint deep-sky targets.

• Budget Used full-frame DSLR/mirrorless body
  Big pixels handle high ISO well. Last-generation bodies are excellent and cheap now. Shop →
• Budget Smartphone telescope adapter
  Genuinely good moon shots for the price of lunch. Shop →
• Mid Astro-modified DSLR (Ha-sensitive)
  The stock IR filter blocks the exact red hydrogen glow nebulae emit. Modding restores it. Shop →
• Mid Cooled colour astro camera (OSC)
  Cooling kills thermal noise on long exposures. One-shot colour keeps it simple. Shop →
• Serious Monochrome astro camera + filter wheel
  Sharpest possible detail, shot one channel at a time. Maximum quality, maximum patience. Shop →
• Serious Smart / all-in-one telescope
  Scope, mount, camera and stacking in one box that aligns itself. Expensive, effortless. Shop →

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📸 Lenses & Filters

For nightscapes: wide and fast. A stop of aperture is worth more after dark than any amount of megapixels.

• Budget 50mm f/1.8 "nifty fifty"
  Cheapest fast glass there is. Superb for star fields and Milky Way panoramas. Shop →
• Budget Samyang / Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 manual
  Manual focus only, which costs nothing at night — you focus on a star anyway. Shop →
• Mid 14–24mm or 15–30mm f/2.8 zoom
  The working nightscape lens: wide enough for the arch, fast enough for 20-second subs. Shop →
• Mid 24mm or 35mm f/1.4 prime
  Two stops faster than a kit lens. Shorter exposures, rounder stars. Shop →
• Mid Light-pollution / broadband filter
  Cuts sodium and LED streetlight glow so the sky reads black instead of orange. Shop →
• Serious Narrowband Ha / dual-band filter
  Shoots nebulae straight through a full moon or a city sky. Nearly cheating. Shop →

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🌌 The Rest of the Night Kit

The unglamorous items that decide whether you come home with data or with frustration.

• Budget Red headlamp
  Preserves your dark adaptation — and your position, should anything be listening. Shop →
• Budget Intervalometer / remote release
  Fires exposure sequences without you nudging the rig every frame. Shop →
• Budget Spare batteries & hand warmers
  Cold nights eat batteries. Bring twice what you think you need. Shop →
• Mid Carbon-fibre tripod
  Every star trail that shouldn't be there traces back to a flexing tripod. Shop →
• Mid Dew heater strips & controller
  On the High-dew nights above, this is the difference between imaging and packing up. Shop →
• Mid Star tracker for camera lenses
  Turns 20-second frames into 3-minute ones. Biggest single upgrade before a telescope. Shop →
• Budget Star atlas & planisphere
  Paper still works when the battery dies and the phone screen ruins your night vision. Shop →

As an Amazon Associate, WeatherZombie earns from qualifying purchases. Links open an Amazon search — stock and pricing move faster than we do.