Skies by city / China
The night sky over Shanghai
Every sky on this page is computed for Shanghai'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 Shanghai
Moon
Last quarter
51% illuminated
Moonrise / moonset
10:39 PM – 12:39 PM
Up around 21:00 local
- M45 — Pleiades14° up
- M31 — Andromeda55° up
- M24 — Milky Way patch18° up
- M2520° up
Computed for October 3, 2026. Local time is estimated from Shanghai's longitude rather than a timezone database — accurate to within about an hour almost everywhere.
The sky from 31° north
From Shanghai the north celestial pole, marked by Polaris, stands 31° above the horizon. Over a year 93% of the celestial sphere clears that horizon; the rest never does, at any hour or season.
- Never sets
- Ursa Minor circles the pole all night, every night of the year.
- Never rises
- Musca, Volans, Chamaeleon, Hydrus, Reticulum, Apus, and 4 more stay below Shanghai's horizon permanently.
Geometric horizon, at 31.23°, 121.47°. 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 Shanghai does — however far away they are.
- Alexandriasame latitude
- Lahore0.3° apart
- Marrakesh0.4° apart
- Jerusalem0.5° apart
- Chengdu0.6° apart
Nights worth naming
Each one opens the free generator with Shanghai 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.