Live camera
Ishigakijima Observatory night-sky camera live stream
Streamed from beside the dome of the 105 cm Murikabushi telescope, near the summit of Mt. Maezu at 230 m. At latitude 24°N the Southern Cross clears the southern horizon on winter and spring nights, which it never does from mainland Japan; in summer the bright core of the Milky Way passes overhead. The feed is still a trial and may stop without notice.
Stream coverWatch it here
Play the stream
Nothing is requested from YouTube until you press it. What plays is the operator's own stream; this site neither records nor rebroadcasts it.
What you are looking at
A camera pointed at the sky by Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory, run by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. What you see is the sky over Ishigaki at this moment, and nothing else.
Ishigaki lies far enough south that stars which never clear the horizon from mainland Japan rise here. It is one of the few places in the country where the whole Southern Cross is visible, and 84 of the 88 constellations are said to be observable. There is far less town light than in a mainland city, and on some nights the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye.
There is nothing to see by day, for obvious reasons — open it between sunset and dawn. A bright moon washes out the fainter stars; the closer to new moon, the more of them there are.
The telescope's name, Murikabushi, is the Yaeyama word for the Pleiades, the clustered stars. It is the largest telescope in Kyushu and Okinawa. Iriomote-Ishigaki National Park, which takes in this island, was certified in 2018 as the first dark sky place in Japan. The sky staying dark here is not an accident; it is kept that way down to the direction the surrounding lights are allowed to point.
Cloud means an empty frame. The subtropical sky moves fast, though, so leaving it a while and trying again often works. This is a test feed and can be off the air.
About this camera
| Place | Ishigaki, Okinawa |
| Format | Live video, trial stream |
| Time zone | Asia/Tokyo (UTC+9) |
| Category | Space · Nature |
| Operator | National Astronomical Observatory of Japan |
| Terms of use | NAOJ terms for reuse |
The operator's own page
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.