Meet Nightsight — What you saw, the night you saw it
Nightsight is the offline observation log for backyard astronomers.
Education
Nightsight
What you saw, the night you saw it.
Every feature, from the first launch.
No account, no login, no cloud. Everything runs on your device and works fully offline — nothing in this post is hidden behind a wall.
What Nightsight does
Nightsight is the offline observation log for backyard astronomers. It does the one thing SkyView Lite, Stellarium Mobile, and Star Walk 2 all refuse to do: lets you save what you actually observed, when you observed it, and from where.
What Nightsight does:
— Tap-to-log. You're at the eyepiece. Tap a star, planet, or Messier object. Nightsight saves it to a life-list with the date, your location (CoreLocation), and tonight's seeing conditions (you grade 1-10 on your own). — Bundled sky catalog. ~50,000 stars (Hipparcos), all 110 Messier objects, all 88 constellations, all 8 planets — on this phone, no network. Browse, search by Messier number, search by constellation. — AR sky finder. Hold up the phone. Constellations and planets are drawn in correct sky position via CoreMotion and your GPS. No subscription, no ads, no 'upgrade for planets.' — Sketch the eyepiece. PencilKit sketch pad. Your visual notes go in the entry. Beat charcoal-on-paper without giving up the paper feel. — Plate-solve your photos. Snap a photo of the sky with your phone. A small on-device CoreML constellation classifier tells you what region you captured. Save it to the entry. — Life list. Sortable by date, by object, by location. Export to CSV via the share sheet for your astronomy club. — No account, no cloud, no analytics. Stays on this phone. — Free.
For the 100,000-300,000 active US amateur astronomers and the millions of telescope-curious — and for everyone tired of SkyView's compass bugs and Stellarium's spinner-only numeric input.
A look inside
Tap any screenshot to open the full-resolution version.
What's inside
- Tonight sky — What's up right now from your latitude; tap to log
- AR finder — Hold the phone up; on-device sky alignment via CoreMotion
- Catalog — Browse stars / Messier / constellations / planets, search
- Eyepiece sketch — PencilKit pad; attach to a log entry
- Life list — Sortable observation log; CSV export via share sheet
Why we built it
Backyard astronomers need a place to log what they observed — the Hipparcos catalog is huge but every iOS planetarium app is either a sub-charged AR toy with a compass bug (SkyView, Star Walk 2) or a spinner-only UX (Stellarium Mobile).
What makes it different
Nightsight is the only iOS stargazing app whose primary verb is 'logged it' — bundled Hipparcos + Messier catalog runs entirely on-device with CoreLocation + CoreMotion alignment, PencilKit sketches, and a SwiftData life list — SkyView's compass is widely reported as wrong, Stellarium charges $13.99 for spinner-only n…
Who it's for
Students, parents helping with homework, and adults who just want a fast answer without an upsell.
In one line: What you saw, the night you saw it.
Try it
See the Nightsight app page for the full feature list, the info table, and support links.
Use Nightsight, found a bug, or have a feature request? Comments are open below — anonymous is fine.
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