Light Pollution Map User Reviews

Jurij Stare

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Can’t see anything

Screen went solid white. Had to uninstall and reinstall. Now I have the position map, but not base layer - so I cannot tell what locations correspond to the colors.

Greg089

2 months ago

Response from developer

Because of the high aurora activity in the past few days, servers were under a heavy strain (20 times more than usual) from users. It should all be working now as usual. Sorry for the the inconvenience this has caused!

Useless

Every time and day it shows same class even sky is more clear, darker and light pollution free.

Raut russ

2 months ago

Response from developer

I think it should be obvious to everyone the app does not show you the observing conditions at a given moment.

VIIRS 2023 availible on website but not app

I like the app but the most recent data, VIIRS 2023, is only on the website making this app useless as of now. Hopefully it will be added soon.

Idktyere are no nicknames left

4 months ago

Response from developer

The update should be available now.

Very Nice

Jurij: Great app! Certainly a very useful tool for all kinds of things. I found it as someone had linked to it from Reddit. People like to know where to go to stargaze, or see the northern lights. Take care!

-hicketre2006-

a year ago

Buggy

On iPad app won’t zoom or pan accurately. Just moves the map however it wants.

Nihontoguy

2 years ago

Response from developer

Please contact me to resolve the issue because this sounds like a bug. After 2 months still no contact?

Map is incomplete

Looking through my local area I can see there are landmarks missing, there also seems to be a lack of variance regards differing levels of light pollution… unless the app becomes more reflective of reality I would give it a hard pass.

witchywoo13

3 years ago

Response from developer

Please report missing landmarks to Microsoft Bing as this app is merely using their base maps. As for light pollution map not reflecting reality (I assume you mean the World Atlas overlay?), I would tend to disagree judging by SQM readings users are submitting, which you can see by turning on the SQM layer. They are well within +/-0.5 magnitude which is the variance of sky brightness due to various atmospheric conditions. You are welcome to send your SQM data for other users to see how wrong the map is.

Good app

I’ve used the web based version for some time but thought I’d try the app. Overall it’s great. Understanding some of the values being listed and what it means for your dark sky experience takes a little leg work. I had to go and actually read part of the paper that goes along with the underlying data set. For me the salient figure would be the ratio listed whenever you click on a point in the map. This ratio is the ratio of the artificial brightness from pollution over the natural brightness of the night sky. Per the paper looking straight up anything 1% or less is about as good as you’re going to get (middle of the ocean would be 0% but 1% is about as good if not looking at the horizon). Haven’t looked at every feature so far but overall app works great but the lag to get stats when you click on a location gets tedious.

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Ggjgv

3 years ago

More usable for mobile

I’v been using the website for a long time and it’s great to finally have a more usable version for mobile. Happy to support the developer more directly too and remove the ads. Thanks to the developer for adding landscape mode on iPad after request. 👍 Now wishing for a lighttrends app and the new contribution tool 😉

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Remi

4 years ago

Response from developer

Thanks for your feedback. The new version should now support landscape mode on iPad.

Can’t move map or shrink

Great idea, desktop version may be better. App help text doesn’t fit on screen; map only responds erratically when I try to move location (using two fingers). Possible delay on server end?

globeshuffler

4 years ago

Response from developer

This sounds like a bug. Please contact me to solve the issue.

Great, but wish text was larger.

I really like the app, but I have trouble seeing the text (location names). When i try to zoom, the landscape zooms but the text remains very small. I would love an option to zoom or set the size of the text.

pgpalmer

4 years ago

Response from developer

Unfortunately the basemaps are provided by Microsoft and I can't customize them. The good news is that there are high DPI versions of the same maps which have larger labels as you zoom in. I just updated the app to version 1.1.7 which has the option to switch to high DPI basemaps under Settings. Try it out and let me know. Edit: It seems Microsoft just changed how this works (the map is sharper, but text is still small on all zoom levels). A fix will have to wait till the next version