Tonight's Sky Over London — 9 November 2026

A night of two halves: the early evening offers a narrow window of opportunity, then fog and cloud take over. The good news? The Moon is a razor-thin waning crescent (8.5% lit) and sets at 15:45 UTC — it's below the horizon all night, so moonlight won't wash out your targets. The bad news? The weather has other plans.

Hour-by-Hour Evolution

• 18:00–19:00 UTC — Your best (and really only) window. Cloud cover sits at its nightly minimum (~58–59%), visibility holds near 10 km, and fog hasn't formed yet. Temperature ~8°C with a light breeze of 3.6–4.1 m/s.
• 20:00–21:00 UTC — Conditions start slipping: clouds climb to 62–64%, fog begins to develop (10–12%), and visibility drops to ~9 km.
• 22:00–23:00 UTC — Clouds reach 67%, fog thickens to 13–16%, visibility falls to ~8.4–8.7 km. The sky is closing in.
• 00:00–01:00 UTC — A sharp degradation: cloud cover jumps to 87–90%, fog hits 21–27%, and visibility bottoms out near 7.3 km. Effectively overcast.

What's Worth Chasing

• 🪐 Saturn — The headline act. At magnitude 0.57 it's the brightest planet of the evening, culminating at 21:18 UTC (its highest point). Catch it early, before the fog wins.
• 🔴 Mars — Magnitude 0.79, but it transits at 06:28 UTC, long after the sky turns to soup. Skip it tonight.
• 🌑 The Moon — Waning crescent, 8.5% illuminated, below the horizon all night. Perfect dark-sky conditions — if only the clouds would cooperate.

Recommended Targets (Bortle 8-friendly)

Given London's heavy light pollution, stick to the bright end of the Messier catalog:

• M45 (Pleiades) — mag 1.6, a naked-eye jewel that shrugs off urban skies
• M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) — mag 3.4, high in the south early evening
• M42 (Orion Nebula) — mag 4.0, climbing in the east as the night progresses
• M44 (Beehive Cluster) — mag 3.7, a fine binocular target

Bottom Line

Set up early — 18:00–19:00 UTC is your golden hour. Point at Saturn first, then sweep to M31 and M45 before the fog rolls in. By midnight, the sky will be a lost cause. No ISS passes or meteor showers to save the night, so make those first two hours count!