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Skies by city / South Africa

The night sky over Cape Town

Every sky on this page is computed for Cape Town's own coordinates — the stars genuinely above the horizon, how high each one stands, and the moon's real phase and position. Not a stock star field with a place name printed on it.

Tonight over Cape Town

Moon

Waning gibbous

59% illuminated

Moonrise / moonset

12:27 AM – 9:01 AM

Up around 21:00 local

  • M7 — Ptolemy’s Cluster40° up
  • M6 — Butterfly Cluster37° up
  • M24 — Milky Way patch38° up
  • M2542° up

Computed for October 2, 2026. Local time is estimated from Cape Town's longitude rather than a timezone database — accurate to within about an hour almost everywhere.

Print-ready PDF, free, drawn for these exact coordinates. We'll email it to you.

We send the poster either way — the box above is only for the occasional note, and never anything else.

The sky from 34° south

From Cape Town the south celestial pole stands 34° above the horizon — the southern sky has no bright pole star to mark it. Over a year 91% of the celestial sphere clears that horizon; the rest never does, at any hour or season.

Never sets
Pavo, Musca, Tucana, Volans, Chamaeleon, Hydrus, and 7 more circle the pole all night, every night of the year.
Never rises
Cepheus, Ursa Minor, and Cassiopeia stay below Cape Town's horizon permanently.

Geometric horizon, at -33.93°, 18.42°. A figure counts as circumpolar only when all of it clears the pole distance, and hills, haze and city light will all take more of the sky than this arithmetic does.

Cities that share this sky

Circumpolar stars are fixed by latitude alone, so these see the same constellations never set as Cape Town does — however far away they are.

Near Cape Town

Close enough that the sky overhead is near enough identical on any given night.

Nights worth naming

Each one opens the free generator with Cape Town and that date already set — change either, or keep it and save the picture.

Looking for a different night — a birthday, an anniversary, the day you met? The free generator takes any date and any place, not just the ones listed here. For the moon on its own, which looked the same from everywhere on Earth that night, start from the moon phase calendar.