🔭 Tonight at Mauna Kea — November 9, 2026

The headline: A stubborn cloud deck slowly thins through the night, and by late evening you'll be hunting galaxies under a moonless, Bortle 2 sky. Patience will pay off.

🌤 Hour-by-Hour Evolution

The sky is not cooperating early, but there's a clear trend — clouds steadily erode:

Key takeaway: Precipitation ends after 21:00, and cloud cover bottoms out around 50% near 23:00 — still above the 40% "good" threshold, but with transparency this good at altitude, you'll likely catch sucker holes. Temperatures are remarkably mild (11–13°C) and winds are near-calm all night, so conditions will be comfortable while you wait.

🌙 The Moon — Your Best Friend Tonight

A waning crescent at just 8.5% illumination, and it's below the horizon the entire night (set at 17:20, rises 06:54). This means zero moonlight interference — dark-sky conditions for deep-sky targets.

🪐 Planets

• Saturn (mag 0.57) — transits at 21:38, perfectly placed in the south. Its rings are still beautifully open; push magnification past 150× if the seeing allows.
• Uranus (mag 5.59) — transits at 01:11. A small, pale green disk — easy in a scope at 100×+, and a fun challenge to tick off.

✨ Recommended Targets

With the moon out of the way, go deep:

• M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) — mag 3.4, a sprawling spiral that fills the eyepiece; look for M32 and M110 companions.
• M42 (Orion Nebula) — rising late, mag 4.0, the season's showpiece. The Trapezium will be crisp.
• M45 (Pleiades) — mag 1.6, stunning even in finderscopes.
• M22 — one of the finest globulars, mag 5.1, dense and resolvable.
• M24 — the "Sagittarius Star Cloud," a rich Milky Way patch perfect for wide-field sweeps.

🛰 Notes

• No ISS passes during tonight's window (the listed flybys have already occurred), and no meteor showers are active.
• Since clouds hover near 50% late, prioritize bright, high-contrast targets like M45 and M31 — they'll punch through thin cloud best.

Bottom line: Start with a warm drink and let the sky clean up. By 22:00–23:00, Saturn and the galaxies should be worth the wait. Clear skies (eventually)! 🌌