Skies by city / Turkey

The night sky over Istanbul

Every sky on this page is computed for Istanbul'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 Istanbul

Moon

Waning gibbous

59% illuminated

Moonrise / moonset

9:25 PM – 1:27 PM

Up around 21:00 local

  • M45 — Pleiades13° up
  • M31 — Andromeda54° up
  • M24 — Milky Way patch14° up
  • M2515° up

Computed for October 2, 2026. Local time is estimated from Istanbul'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 46° north

From Istanbul the north celestial pole, marked by Polaris, stands 46° above the horizon. Over a year 85% of the celestial sphere clears that horizon; the rest never does, at any hour or season.

Never sets
Draco, Cepheus, Camelopardalis, Ursa Minor, and Cassiopeia circle the pole all night, every night of the year.
Never rises
Pavo, Dorado, Ara, Musca, Tucana, Volans, and 13 more stay below Istanbul's horizon permanently.

Geometric horizon, at 45.76°, 8.56°. 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 Istanbul does — however far away they are.

Near Istanbul

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

Nights worth naming

Each one opens the free generator with Istanbul 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.