Best nights to stargaze — next 7 days
Pick a location and we’ll tell you the best nights to head out over the next week, plus which planets, meteor showers, and satellite passes you’ll actually be able to see.
Where are you watching from?
Tonight at a glance
Best nights — next 7 days
What you can see tonight
Planets above the horizon
Active meteor showers
Bright constellations this season
ISS passes — next 3 days
How the score works
Each night is rated out of 100 based on three things that make or break a stargazing trip: how cloudy it’ll be during full darkness (weighted most), how much moonlight is washing out the sky, and whether any meteor showers are peaking. Anything above 70 is a good night; 85+ is excellent. Get away from city lights if you can.
The Southern Delta Aquariids are a Southern Hemisphere specialty. The radiant sits deep in southern skies, so while Northern Hemisphere observers struggle to see anything at all, from New Zealand the shower climbs high and delivers steady rates through most of the night. It is active right through late July and into August, overlapping with the Perseids and the Alpha Capricornids.
When to watch the Southern Delta Aquariids
The Southern Delta Aquariids peak around 29–30 July each year. Unlike sharp-peaked showers, this one has a long, gentle maximum — any night between roughly 25 July and 5 August will deliver similar rates. The radiant rises in the early evening and is high in the northern sky by midnight, so the shower is active most of the night rather than being confined to the pre-dawn hours.
Where to look from New Zealand
Look to the north and overhead from about 11 pm onwards. The radiant sits in Aquarius near the star Delta Aquarii, and from New Zealand it passes almost overhead around 1 am — about as good as a meteor-shower radiant ever gets. Any dark patch of sky in the northern half will show plenty of meteors; ignore the southern sky, where streaks are less likely to appear.
How to get the best view
- Go between midnight and 4 am. Earlier is fine but the radiant climbs higher as the night goes on, and higher radiant means more visible meteors.
- Get properly away from town. Even a small town's skyglow steals half the shower from you.
- July nights in New Zealand are genuinely cold. Dress for a winter day at the beach, then add another layer.
- Face north and lie back. A sun lounger or folding camp bed is the right tool for this job.
- Give your eyes 20 minutes to dark-adapt before you start counting. Phones and car headlights reset the clock.
- Check the Moon. A bright Moon can cut visible rates dramatically — the forecast tool above shows phase and rise time.
- Bring a thermos. This is a long, slow shower — no burst, just a steady trickle of meteors for hours.
What causes the Southern Delta Aquariids
The parent body of the Southern Delta Aquariids is most likely Comet 96P/Machholz, a short-period comet that loops the Sun every six years on an unusually tilted orbit. 96P/Machholz is thought to be the parent of a whole family of meteor streams — including the daytime Arietids and the Northern Delta Aquariids — created when the comet broke up or shed large amounts of dust at earlier passages. Earth crosses the main stream every July and August.
The meteors themselves
These meteors come in at about 41 kilometres per second — medium speed. They are a little fainter on average than the Geminids or Perseids, with fewer bright fireballs, but because the radiant is so well placed from New Zealand the visible rates can reach 20 to 25 per hour at a dark site near peak. They also run in parallel with the Alpha Capricornids, which add a handful of slow, bright meteors to the mix.
Forecast for your night
Use the live viewing panel at the top of this page to see whether the sky will be clear where you are. For the full night-by-night cloud, Moon and darkness forecast across every New Zealand region, visit the New Zealand Stargazing Forecast.