The moon decides what you'll see: around the new moon the Milky Way core is naked-eye visible from most big parks. Below — every park with a hand-curated night-sky guide, and tonight's moon so you can time the trip.
Glowing nights are under 25% moonlight — dark enough to see the Milky Way core from a big park. Bookmark this page and aim for the darkest stretch.
Every site lists the dates. The dates alone don't tell you much — a peak of 150 meteors an hour under a full Moon shows you almost nothing, while a quiet 20 an hour on a dark night is a real show. So each shower below carries the Moon it will actually have, computed for that exact night.
Peaks October 21, 2026 · active Oct 2 – Nov 7
A bright Moon at peak hides everything but the fireballs.
Halley's second pass of the year — fast meteors with long trains.
Debris from Comet Halley
Peaks November 17, 2026 · active Nov 6 – Nov 30
Some moonlight, but the brighter meteors cut through it.
Usually modest, but the parent comet produces a storm roughly every 33 years.
Debris from Comet Tempel–Tuttle
Peaks December 14, 2026 · active Dec 4 – Dec 20
Peak falls on dark nights — the faint meteors will show.
The strongest shower of the year, and the only major one from an asteroid.
Debris from Asteroid 3200 Phaethon
Peaks December 22, 2026 · active Dec 17 – Dec 26
A bright Moon at peak hides everything but the fireballs.
Small, northern, and easy to have to yourself on the solstice.
Debris from Comet 8P/Tuttle
The hourly figure is the zenithal hourly rate — the idealised count under a perfect dark sky with the radiant straight overhead. Real counts are always lower, and lower still near a town. Peak dates shift by up to a day year to year.
TONIGHT · PARK BY PARK| Park | Tonight's sky | Air quality |
|---|---|---|
| 🌌 Acadia National Park | Partly Cloudy | AQI 17 · Good |
| 🌌 Arches National Park | Mostly Clear | AQI 64 · Moderate |
| 🌌 Badlands National Park | Mostly Clear | — |
| 🌌 Big Bend National Park | Isolated Showers And Thunderstorms then Partly Cloudy | AQI 29 · Good |
| 🌌 Canyonlands National Park | Partly Cloudy | AQI 64 · Moderate |
| 🌌 Grand Canyon National Park | Slight Chance Showers And Thunderstorms | AQI 32 · Good |
| 🌌 Yosemite National Park | Partly Cloudy | AQI 64 · Moderate |
| 🌌 Zion National Park | Chance Showers And Thunderstorms | AQI 41 · Good |
DATA · NOAA + AIRNOW · VERIFY CLOSURES AT NPS.GOV
Each guide computes sunrise, sunset, golden hour and the moon for that park's own timezone — open one and scroll to Tonight's sky.
25 photographs from the National Park Service's own galleries — every one public domain and credited to the person who took it. Tap any frame to see it larger.
Photographs are served from nps.gov at gallery size (~50 KB each) — we link to the original rather than re-hosting it. Credit belongs to the photographers named on each frame.
A certification isn't a rating of how dark a night looks — it's a commitment: the park has replaced its lighting, measured its sky and agreed to keep it that way. That makes it the most reliable single signal for choosing where to point a telescope.
List read from the National Park Service on 2026-07-20 and filtered to national parks. We store no certification years or designation types because that page doesn't publish them — and guessing them would be worse than leaving them out. New parks are certified regularly, so a park missing here means not on our verified list, not that its sky is poor.
A new moon. The Milky Way core is naked-eye visible when the moon is under about 25% lit. Tonight it is 20% lit; the next new moon is October 11 - the calendar above highlights the darkest nights.
Roughly March through October in the lower 48: the galactic core rises after dark and sits highest around midnight in summer. Pick a night from the dark window in the calendar and check the park's cloud forecast in the table above.
No. The Milky Way, meteors and satellites are naked-eye sights; binoculars add star clusters and Jupiter's moons. The one essential is a red-light headlamp - it preserves your night vision.
Acadia National Park, Arches National Park, Badlands National Park, Big Bend National Park, Canyonlands National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Yosemite National Park, Zion National Park. Each guide computes sunrise, sunset and the moon for that park's own timezone.
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