ATLAS Tonight's Sky

Astronomer, a new subscription ATLAS is still free, and the free version still does what it always did: tonight's best targets from your own sky, scored for your gear and your light pollution. Astronomer adds the twelve month imaging planner. Pick a target and see which nights of the next year it is actually reachable from where you stand, how many hours each night gives you, and which months are worth planning around. Free accounts see the best months for any target. Astronomer sees the rest. It also opens Universe view, which leaves the sky behind and puts every object at its real distance, so a constellation stops being a shape and becomes the scattered stars it actually is. $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year, and the first year is $19.99. Point at the sky Hold your phone up and ATLAS shows you what you are looking at, with the live camera behind the map if you want it. Nothing to set up: it finds north when it opens and then follows the phone, so the map stays where it should even near a building or a steel railing. If it ever looks off, center the Moon and tap it, and it corrects. Also in this release A calmer first launch, a time scrubber that reaches five years either way, a rebuilt Conditions page that reads as one night instead of three sections, and search that keeps up as you type.