Oslo, Norway
From Oslo, Norway, full astronomical darkness starts at 23:45 tonight.
It gets fully dark tonight
The Sun sets at 20:29, the sky is fully dark for stargazing from 23:45. This page recomputes with the sky, not from a table.
- Sunset
- 20:29
- Civil dusk
- 21:21
- Nautical dusk
- 22:21
- Astro. dark
- 23:45
What time does it get dark tonight?
The sky is fully dark from 23:45 tonight in Oslo, Norway. That's when the Milky Way, faint meteors and deep-sky objects become visible.
- Sunset
- 20:29
- Civil
- 21:21
- Nautical
- 22:21
- Astro.
- 23:45
Signature
Tonight at a glance
Live for Oslo, Norway · uses the standard astronomical definitions of twilight: civil (Sun 6° below), nautical (12° below), astronomical (18° below).
Tonight's sequence
From sunset to fully dark — minute by minute
Twilight is not one moment but four stages. Here's how tonight's sky darkens from your location, and what each stage means for what you can see.
- 1
Sunset
20:29The Sun's upper limb touches the horizon. Sky is bright, planets not yet visible. Golden hour begins for photographers.
- 2
Civil dusk (blue hour)
21:21Sun is 6° below the horizon. Streetlights come on. The brightest stars, Venus and Jupiter become visible. Lasted 52 minutes.
- 3
Nautical dusk
22:21Sun is 12° below. The horizon is no longer distinguishable at sea. Most of the naked-eye constellations are now visible. Blue hour to here: 60 min.
- 4
Astronomical darkness
23:45Sun is 18° below. The sky is truly dark — the Milky Way and faint meteors become visible. This is when astronomers say "night" begins. Nautical to full dark: 84 min.
Read
'Dark' has three definitions — all correct
Which one you care about depends on what you're trying to do.
Nautical twilight — the blue hour has ended, the horizon has faded, and the first bright stars have arrived.
Civil twilight ends when the Sun is 6° below the horizon. This is the boundary where you start needing headlights on the road and streetlights come on automatically. The sky is a saturated blue — photographers call this the blue hour. You can already see Venus, Jupiter and the brightest handful of stars.
Nautical twilight ends at 12° below. Historically this was the point where the horizon at sea became indistinguishable from the sky — sailors could no longer use a sextant to fix stars against it. From land, this is when most of the naked-eye constellations are visible.
Astronomical twilight ends at 18° below. Only then is no sunlight reaching the upper atmosphere. This is what astronomers, aurora hunters and Milky Way photographers mean by dark. Faint meteors, weak aurora and deep-sky objects need this level of darkness to be seen properly.
At high latitudes in summer, astronomical night never happens — the Sun stays too shallow below the horizon for the sky to blacken. Norwegian summer nights are famously pale for this exact reason. It is not a defect; it is geometry.
After dark
What real astronomical darkness looks like
Once the Sun is 18° below the horizon, there is no residual sunlight in the sky. What you see instead is airglow — a permanent, faint greenish glow from oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the upper atmosphere — plus zodiacal light along the ecliptic, and, from a dark enough site, the full arch of the Milky Way stretching from horizon to horizon.
This is when meteor showers become worth staying up for, when aurora can be seen at lower activity levels, and when the faintest deep-sky objects — nebulae, distant galaxies, comets — reveal themselves. It is also when your eye's own dark adaptation reaches its full sensitivity, roughly 30 minutes after the last bright light.
Even the darkest astronomical night is not black. It is deep charcoal, textured, alive. The stars are unignorable. It is worth arranging your night around, if your latitude allows it.
Astronomical night — Sun 18° below the horizon, no light pollution. The Milky Way is unignorable.
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