Best things to see in the Southern Hemisphere 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

July 2026 highlights

Conjunctions involving the Moon are quite common. A good example occurs in the early evening on 17 July, when Venus is 8° above the bright star Regulus, with the thin crescent Moon halfway between.

Rarer is a close meeting between a planet and a bright star, such as when Venus passes just 1° away from Regulus on 7 July.

The morning presents a great Mars–Uranus conjunction separated by just 21 arcminutes on 4 and 5 July, easily fitting in a low-power eyepiece.

Stars and constellations

Sagittarius passes overhead on July nights. To the ancients, it was a centaur (half man, half horse) and some traditional names reveal the creature’s deadly side.

Lambda (λ) Sagittarii is Kaus Borealis, translating as ‘northern (tip of the) bow’.

Heading southward is Delta (δ) or Kaus Media, meaning ‘middle bow’ and then Epsilon (ε) or Kaus Australis, the ‘southern (end) bow’. Gamma² (γ²) is Alnasl or ‘arrowhead’, pointing towards Antares,
the ‘heart’ star of the scorpion (Scorpius).

Southern hemisphere planets

Brilliant Venus dominates the early western evening sky this month. July opens with Jupiter and Mercury dropping into the twilight glow as they depart the evening sky.

Neptune rises around 23:00 mid-month, followed by Saturn around an hour later. Both planets remain visible throughout the morning, transiting in the predawn sky.

Mars arrives around an hour before the start of dawn, passed by Uranus in early July as this distant world rises quickly in the morning.

Deep-sky

Your targets all lie in Scorpius’s tail, easily fitting in the same attractive binocular field.

Three bright stars make an impressive near-equilateral triangle (7 arcminutes a side). Start at bright Zeta² (ζ²) Scorpii; head clockwise to Zeta¹ (ζ¹) then HR6266, with magnitudes of 3.6, 4.8 and 5.8, respectively. Zeta²’s orange/yellow presents a good contrast to white Zeta¹.

Just 0.5° north is brilliant fourth-magnitude open cluster NGC 6231 (RA 16h 54.1m, dec. –41° 49”). Nicknamed the Northern Jewel Box, it has around a dozen fourth- to sixth-magnitude blue/white stars.

Immediately north, the stars get much dimmer and trail into a loose cluster called Collinder 316. This group has been likened to a naked-eye false comet, with Zeta being the head.

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

More guides

July 2026 highlights

Stars and constellations

Southern hemisphere planets

Deep-sky

Southern hemisphere star charts