Know what’s worth observing tonight.
It reads tonight’s sky, builds an ordered program with something worth saying at every stop, then runs the night with you from the eyepiece. For outreach nights, club nights, and your own.
We’ll reach out the day it hits the App Store.
We only email you about this app, and never sell or rent the list. One click to leave.
Written by an astronomer who guides at Kitt Peak National Observatory, and used there on real outreach nights.
A clear night is the easy part. The hard part is the hour before — deciding what is actually worth showing tonight — and the moment at the eyepiece when someone asks what they’re looking at and “a galaxy” isn’t a good enough answer.
This is not a star chart, and it will not drive your telescope or take a photograph. There are good apps for that and you probably already have one. This one answers a narrower question — what is worth showing tonight, in what order, and what to say about it — and tries to answer it all the way down.
Tonight’s program,
in running order.
An observing program is a running order for the night: a handful of objects, sequenced by when each one is best placed, each with a paragraph written to be read out loud. Tell it what you’re looking through, when you’re starting, and how many stops you want — four to twenty-four — and it builds one from what is actually above your horizon tonight, scored against the Moon, with a reason next to every object and an alternative ready for a one-tap swap when clouds take one away. Pro adds all seven tour styles and tunes the language to your audience: general public, families and kids, or enthusiasts.
Then run the night
from the eyepiece.
Guide mode turns your program into a full-screen runner: one stop at a time, a story worth reading aloud in type you can see in the dark, where to aim next, and two giant buttons — shown, or next. It keeps the screen awake, survives red-light mode, and picks up exactly where you left off. Born at real star parties, for the moment twelve people are waiting at your telescope.
Every night,
on the record.
Share a recap card with the group before they’ve left the parking lot, and print a handout worth keeping. With Pro, the night files itself into your history — what you showed, what you skipped, the seeing, the Moon — and your Messier and Caldwell completion ticks upward night after night.
The full Messier
and Caldwell catalogs.
266 objects: all 110 Messier, all 109 Caldwell — the list that picks up where Messier stops — plus 22 NGC and 8 IC picks, 7 planets, and 10 named stars, sorted by altitude for your sky, right now or at any hour you scrub to. Real-time positions, equipment notes, and an observing tip for every one. Filter by catalog, type, or what you haven’t seen yet.
The Moon,
named and mapped.
An interactive 3D globe — drag to spin it, twist with two fingers to roll it, double-tap to snap back. True Sun lighting follows the actual sun angle; switch to Explore for full illumination. Twenty-four labeled features across three layers: nine maria, nine craters, and all six Apollo landing sites. Tap any marker for its story — and when the Moon is up, your program already knows to work around it.
It tells you the truth
about tonight.
One verdict line at the top of the dashboard — “Worth setting up,” “Marginal tonight,” or “Not tonight,” each with the reason attached. Behind it: cloud, wind and rain chance hour by hour, tonight’s seeing and transparency — how steady and how clean the air is — plus dew risk, and an estimate of the faintest star you’ll actually see, with the Moon included. And when a genuinely clear night is coming inside 48 hours, the app tells you first.
✦ Also included
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Sky & Celestial Events
ISS passes drawn horizon to horizon with the time and direction to look, rocket launches with visibility windows, meteor showers, eclipses, and conjunctions. Alerts for any of them are part of Pro.
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Space Weather
Aurora probability, the KP index behind it, and solar activity — live from NOAA.
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Red Light Mode
Tap once. The whole interface — guide mode included — switches to full red to preserve your night vision.
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Home Screen Widgets
Four widget types: Sky Snapshot, Tonight’s Program, Favorites, and Astronomical Seeing — part of Pro, and they need iOS 17.
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iCloud Sync
Your session history, the objects you’ve marked seen, and your favorites ride your own iCloud to a new phone. No account of ours to create, no server of ours holding your log.
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Printable Handouts
Any program becomes a clean printed PDF — checkboxes at the eyepiece, a keepsake after.
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CSV Export
Your observing log is yours. Export everything, any time.
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En Español
Fully bilingual, down to the observing tips — switch languages in the app any time.
I guide public nights at Kitt Peak. The telescope is the easy part. The hard part is the hour before, deciding what is actually worth showing, and the moment a stranger looks up from the eyepiece and asks what they just saw.
I built this because I needed it, and then the guides standing next to me started asking for it. Everything in it earned its place on a real night, in the dark, with people waiting.
Simple, honest pricing
The app is in TestFlight today with every Pro feature unlocked and free. Testers who see it through launch are grandfathered in.
Get on the list →Free
- Dashboard, verdict line & sky conditions
- The full 266-object catalog
- A generated observing program each night
- Shareable recap cards & printed handouts
- Red light mode · English & Español
Flight Deck Pro
- All seven tour styles & audience tuning
- Guide mode at the eyepiece
- Session history & collection progress
- Clear-sky & event alerts
- All four home-screen widgets
Ready when
the sky is.
We’ll reach out the day it hits the App Store.
We only email you about this app, and never sell or rent the list. One click to leave.
© 2026 Mathias Jacobson · Telescope Flight Deck · Weather data: Apple Weather & Open-Meteo