SpaceTRC / Observing tools
Deep-sky catalogue
Charles Messier’s 110 objects plus the 45 finest NGC and IC objects visible from Türkiye, each with a real sky image. Pick your city to see when and how high every object climbs tonight, and discover what the Arabic names of the stars mean and how Islamic astronomy shaped them.
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Plan
What can you see tonight?
Calculations use the coordinates of the city you choose and your browser’s time zone. Share your location for results at your exact spot; it is used only in your browser.
Tonight’s picks: bright, easy objects high in the sky (time of highest point).
155 objects
Messier and selected NGC/IC objects
Each card shows a real sky photograph, the constellation, brightness (magnitude), apparent size and tonight’s altitude curve; the dashed line marks 30°. Use “Seen it” to keep your own Messier log; your ticks are stored only on this device.
The suggested instrument is based on brightness and assumes a dark, unpolluted sky; large faint nebulae are much harder from a city. Images: Digitized Sky Survey 2 (red plate) via NASA SkyView, cached on the SpaceTRC server.
Names from Arabic
What do the star names mean?
Most of the star names in use today come from Arabic. They reached Europe in the Middle Ages through the works of astronomers of the Islamic world, sometimes garbled in transcription. Each card gives the Arabic original, its meaning and how high the star climbs tonight from your chosen city.
Heritage
Islamic astronomy and the sky catalogues
The roots of deep-sky catalogues and star names run through an observing tradition stretching from Baghdad to Samarkand and Istanbul.
The “Book of Fixed Stars”. The earliest known written mention of the Andromeda Galaxy, which he called a “small cloud”. Many modern star names reached Europe through this work.
The Zij-i Sultani, compiled at the Samarkand Observatory, gives positions for more than 1,000 stars; it is regarded as the first major star catalogue based on new observations since Ptolemy.
At the Istanbul Observatory in Tophane, Taqi al-Din and his team observed the sky and recorded the Great Comet of 1577.
The Turkish sky
Turkish names in the sky
Turkish names for the sky were used to find direction, follow the seasons and travel.
“The iron stake” (Old Turkic Temir Kazuk). The sky seems tethered to it and turns around it; travellers used it to find north.
The bright open cluster in Taurus. Its appearance and disappearance marked the seasons in the Anatolian folk calendar.
Old Turkic “Yetigen”, the seven stars; also called Yedi Kardeş, “the seven siblings”.
“The straw road”: in folk tales, straw spilled by someone carrying it across the sky.
Not a star but a planet. In the evening it is the “Shepherd’s Star”; in the morning “Kervankıran”, the caravan-breaker, said to fool caravans into setting off too early.
Find tonight’s planets and events in the Sky Calendar and live views on the Live Observatory page.
- Object data: OpenNGC by Mattia Verga and contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0). M102 is taken as NGC 5866.
- Images: Digitized Sky Survey 2 (STScI/AAO/ESO) via NASA GSFC SkyView.
- Star names: IAU Working Group on Star Names; P. Kunitzsch and T. Smart, A Dictionary of Modern Star Names.
- Visibility: Sun, Moon and object positions are computed in your browser with approximate formulas (accurate to a few minutes).
Last updated: 2 November 2026