when the moon is out of the way, whether the sky will be clear, and where to drive: thirty-eight dark overlooks, balds and campgrounds across western north carolina.
tonight
cloud forecasts: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0); nightly averages calculated here.
every new moon for the next twelve months, with the days on either side that make up the window. click one to jump the calendar there.
the annual showers for the next twelve months, each on the night its peak belongs to, and how the moon and the hour treat it from home. the rate is a ceiling for comparing nights, the count a perfect sky would give with the radiant where it is; a real one, with haze, glow and trees, gives less. most showers are nearly as good a night either side of the peak. click one to jump the calendar there.
thirty-eight high, open, dark places across western north carolina, from the cherohala skyway to doughton park, ranked by drive time from home. drive times are estimates, and all of it needs checking before you drive. the layer control on the map can also show every other named overlook on the north carolina parkway, modelled rather than visited.
map: OpenTopoMap online by default. Optional device downloads: USGS The National Map, 3DEP multidirectional hillshade and USDA/USGS orthoimagery. Sky glow: David Lorenz’s light pollution atlas. Source: EOG, Colorado School of Mines. Modelled brightness overhead; color key · sources & credits.
the ridge, the moon and the milky way from a spot, on any night. drag left or right to turn along the horizon, and slide through the day and night: the sky lightens through dawn, so you can see where on this skyline the sun comes up and goes down. the thumbnail on any spot card, and the button on any parkway overlook, bring that place here.
phase times come from the meeus true-phase algorithm and are converted to your local time zone, so dates should match published almanacs to the day. the window is a planning heuristic: the moon also rises and sets, so a waxing crescent a few days past new is gone by late evening, and a waning crescent doesn't rise until the small hours. those edge days are often darker than they look. meteor shower peaks are turned into dates from the solar longitudes in the international meteor organization’s calendar, and the hourly figure on each is a ceiling worked out for a perfect sky from home: what you count will be lower. cloud cover comes from open-meteo and is a model, not a promise; the spot notes are hand-written and are not a substitute for checking with the land manager. the sky line beneath each one is not hand-written: it is sampled from the light pollution atlas at the spot and at eight bearings 10, 25 and 50 km out, so “brightest to the northwest at 50 km” means a town sits there, not that somebody remembers it that way.
moon surface: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio, Ernie Wright. Cropped and masked here to show the phases.
© 2026 Shawn Skelly