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Skies by city / United States

The night sky over San Francisco

Every sky on this page is computed for San Francisco'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 San Francisco

Moon

Last quarter

55% illuminated

Moonrise / moonset

10:10 PM – 12:57 PM

Up around 21:00 local

  • M45 — Pleiades13° up
  • M31 — Andromeda55° up
  • M24 — Milky Way patch17° up
  • M2518° up

Computed for October 2, 2026. Local time is estimated from San Francisco'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 38° north

From San Francisco the north celestial pole, marked by Polaris, stands 38° above the horizon. Over a year 90% of the celestial sphere clears that horizon; the rest never does, at any hour or season.

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

Geometric horizon, at 37.79°, -122.41°. 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 San Francisco does — however far away they are.

Near San Francisco

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

Nights worth naming

Each one opens the free generator with San Francisco 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.