Southern Hemisphere night sky tonight

If you're based in the Southern Hemisphere and want to know what you can see in the night sky tonight, this page is for you.

Our monthly-updated night-sky guide will show you what you can see in the Southern Hemisphere over the coming weeks.

We'll include monthly highlights, stars, constellations, planets and deep-sky objects.

More guides

Southern Hemipshere stargazing
Best night-sky targets to see in Australia
Australian astrophotography

The Strawberry Moon captured by Taran Sohal over Byron Bay Lighthouse, New South Wales, Australia, 11 June 2025, 16:41 local time. Equipment: Sony A7 IV camera, Sony 200-600mm f/5.6 lens, Sirui tripod. Exposure: Single exposure at f/11, ISO 320, shutter 1/100. Processing: Adobe Photoshop 2025 — Credit: Taran Sohal

May 2026 highlights

The Eta Aquariid meteor shower is associated with Halley’s Comet and is active 19 April–28 May, peaking around 6 May.

It has swift, yellow meteors and famously persistent trains (glowing paths left in their wake). From mid-latitude Southern Hemisphere locations, the radiant lies reasonably high in the northeast (around 40°) in the predawn sky.

Sadly, 2026’s peak sees a near full Moon to the northwest in the mornings, so seeing trains may be a challenge.

Planets

Venus and Jupiter are in the northwest early evening sky. As Venus gains altitude and Jupiter heads towards conjunction, they slowly draw closer, ending May 10° apart, setting one hour after twilight ends.

Neptune and Saturn rise around 03:00 mid-month. Mars follows, having climbed out of the Sun’s glare, rising around one hour before dawn.

Mercury is briefly visible embedded in the dawn glow in early May, as it heads towards its mid-month conjunction.

Stars and constellations

After the Sun, our nearest star is Alpha Centauri, whose two first-magnitude stars are binaries in an 80-year orbit.

Their separation swings from 11 AU out to 35 AU. With an orbit highly inclined to Earth, their angular distance changes dramatically.

They sit 9.5 arcseconds apart in 2026, closing to 1.7 arcseconds in 2038, before widening to 21.8 arcseconds in 2060.

It’s remarkable to observe such stellar motion over so few years, all visible through a backyard telescope!

Deep-sky objects

The biggest, brightest globular cluster is passing nearly overhead in the evenings: NGC 5139 (RA 13h 26.8m, dec. –47° 28’), best known as Omega (ω) Centauri.

A fourth-magnitude globular 36 arcminutes across, its dense 10-arcminute core smoothly transitions to a rich halo.

Individual stars are around 11th magnitude, so it’s resolvable – including numerous easy doubles – in any scope. The cluster has a profusion of lacy star patterns, with some star-poor lanes. An awesome object!

Look 12° west to the close double D Centauri (RA 12h 14.0m, dec. –45° 43’), with mag. +5.8 yellow primary and mag. +7.0 white companion, 2.8 arcseconds apart. Reasonable power (100x) is needed to split this impressive pair.

Southern Hemisphere Star Charts

Access this month's and all previous star charts for the Southern Hemisphere by clicking on the links below.

Best things to see in the Southern Hemisphere sky, May 2026