A real-time clock of the sky

Live · Your location · Right now

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What you see

Every planet.
Right now.

Planetock is a compass clock for the sky. At a glance you know exactly where to look for any planet, the sun, or the moon — oriented to where you're standing, updated every second.

10 Planets
Mercury through Pluto — each as a hand pointing to its position in the sky
Sun & Moon
Live position, moon phase with correct terminator, rise and set ticks
Milky Way
The galactic core fades in at dusk — rise, zenith, and set times included
Night Sky
Stars emerge at civil twilight. Shooting stars appear when it's dark enough
Sky Color
The face shifts from noon blue through golden hour to deep astronomical night
Your Location
Every position calculated for exactly where you are, right now
How to read it

South at the top.
Face it to face south.

1
South is at the top Unlike a map, the sky clock puts south at the top — because that's where planets spend most of their time. Face south and the clock matches what's in front of you.
2
Each hand is a planet The longer the hand, the higher the planet is in the sky. A hand near the rim means the planet is near the horizon. A hand near the center means it's almost overhead.
3
The dark sector is night The face is divided into day and night by the arc of twilight. Stars and the Milky Way appear naturally in the night sector, and fade as dawn approaches.
Companion App

Plan The Night

Know which deep sky objects are worth imaging tonight. Plan The Night calculates tonight's best targets from the full Messier and NGC catalog — go/no-go conditions, moon interference, imaging windows, and export to NINA or SkySafari.

Open Plan The Night
About

Made in northern
New Mexico

"A philosopher of stars trying to share what the sky looks like right now."

Planetock was built by John Williams, a creative technologist, author and astrophotographer in Santa Fe. It grew from a simple question: what if a clock could show you the sky instead of the time?

It's free, open to the sky, and made with love. The Milky Way is real polygon data. The moon phase terminator is calculated from first principles. Every second, the positions update for exactly where you are.

Built with D3.js, SunCalc, d3-celestial · terrazoom.com

Support

Keep the
stars aligned

Planetock is free and always will be. If it's made your nights better, a small contribution means a lot.

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