Space, and what's in the sky tonight

Space on Peabody is for children aged about 5 to 12 and the grown-up holding the phone in the yard. It is free, has no ads, no app and no account, and nothing your child picks is sent anywhere.

Five minutes at bedtime

Open Sky Tonight and type your ZIP once. It is kept on this phone for next time.
Let your child pick a box: the Moon, a planet, or shooting stars. Tap 🔊 and the card is read aloud.
Go out together and face the way the compass says. One fist at arm's length is about 10° of sky.
Turn on Outside mode: red on black, so nobody's night eyes are spoiled by the screen.
Print Tonight's sheet for the fridge, or the Moon journal for a month of drawings.

Safety, plainly

Never look at the Sun, with eyes, sunglasses, binoculars or a telescope.
For an eclipse, follow NASA's eclipse safety guidance: NASA says to use eclipse glasses or a handheld solar viewer that meets the ISO 12312-2 standard. We make no claim of our own.
Use red light outside, and give eyes about twenty minutes to adjust to the dark.
A grown-up goes too. Stay where you can see each other, away from roads and water.

What we keep on your phone

The ZIP (under pb-space-zip), whether Outside mode is on tonight, and the reading level. Your phone looks up the ZIP's first three digits in a table it already has and then asks peabody.kids for the frozen sky file for that whole area, about 300 miles across; the ZIP itself never leaves the phone. Nothing is live: no satellites, no weather, no aurora. For clouds, check your local forecast; for the weather on a globe, see Planet Earth's weather.

Asked by families

Is 8 pm too early?

Not for the Moon and the planets: they are best in the evening, and Sky Tonight's card picks a time after dark. Meteor showers are the exception; most get better after midnight, and each shower page says what an early bedtime still gets.

Binoculars or not?

Not needed for anything on the card. If you own a pair, the Moon near first quarter and Jupiter's four bright moons are the two best first looks. Don't buy a telescope for a first try.

Why does the card say "about"?

Times are worked out ahead for a square of the country about 300 miles wide, so they can be ten minutes off for your street. That is close enough to go outside.

What if it's cloudy?

Nothing on the card can see through clouds. Try the next clear night: the Moon and planets move slowly, and a shower is active for days around its peak.

Every wing

“A grown-up goes outside too. That's the rule, and it's more fun anyway.”