Globe At Night

Globe at Night is an international citizen-science campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of light pollution by inviting citizen-scientists to measure & submit their night sky brightness observations.

Can you find Gemini?

During the first couple of months of the year, Gemini can most easily be found by first locating the two brightest stars in Orion (a constellation which looks like a huge hour glass) and the two brightest stars in Canis Major and Canis Minor (the “dog” stars) that follow Orion. Then head northeast from the two brightest stars in Orion about the same distance as the separation between the two brightest stars in Orion. Pollux will be among the brightest star in the sky after Capella and a couple of other stars. Then Castor and Pollux are about two-fingers-together-at-arm’s-length apart from each other. After finding these two stars, the rest of the constellation completes a rectangle toward Orion. One fun fact is that the two stars that make up the heads of Castor and Pollux, appropriately named Castor and Pollux, have very interesting features about them. Castor is a complex star system made up of six different stars, while Pollux has been getting brighter and brighter for the last thousand years and is now the brightest star in the constellation.

Visible in: Northern hemisphere

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Can you find Canis Major?

To find the constellation Canis Major, first locate the constellation Orion. The three stars that make up Orion's belt point southeast to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky. Sirius is the neck of Canis Major. Slightly below and to the right of Sirius is the front paw, and other bright stars below and to the left mark the hindquarters including the tail and rear paw.

Visible in: Southern hemisphere

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Can you find Orion?

Orion looks very much like a person. First, you should spot Orion’s Belt, which is made of three bright stars in a straight line. One of Orion’s legs is represented by the bright star Rigel, one of the brightest stars in the night sky. His two shoulders are made of the stars Bellatrix and Betelgeuse. You can see Betelgeuse’s reddish color without a telescope.

Visible in: Northern hemisphere, Southern hemisphere

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Join us for the March, 2023 campaign!

We are off to a great start this year with 7632 observations so far! Help us reach our goal of 20000 data points for 2023!

Check out the dates and constellations

7632

Observations from 2023

20000

Goal for 2023

278170

Total Observations

How to report data?

Practice finding all the Globe at Night Constellations, when you are done practicing follow the 6 steps:

Go Outside

During the campaign dates, go outside more than an hour after sunset (8-10 pm local time). The Moon should not be up. Let your eyes become used to the dark for 10 minutes before your first observation.

Use App

Use a night sky app on your phone outside to find the constellation from where you are.

Open Form

Go to the Globe at Night Report page to start to enter Globe at Night measurements. Make sure you are in “Nighttime version”

Fill your location

With a smart phone, the app will put in the date, time, location (latitude/longitude) automatically. Otherwise please type them in. For your location, type the street address closest to your observation along with the city, state or province and country.

Choose the star

Choose the star chart that looks most closely to what you see toward your constellation. That is, what is the faintest star you can see in the sky and find in the chart?