Star Gazer

Hold your phone up to the sky and Stargazer shows you what you are looking at. Tap anything — a star, a planet, a faint smudge you cannot identify — and it tells you what it is, which constellation it belongs to, and which way to look. Not just a name: "Betelgeuse, Orion's shoulder. Look south, fairly high." WHICH WAY IS DARKEST Most star charts show you the sky. This one also shows you the sky you can actually see. Stargazer knows the towns around you and how much light each one throws onto your horizon, so it tells you the brightest direction — and, far more usefully, the darkest one. "London, 49 km NE. Brightest part of your horizon. Darkest sky is to the SW." THE SHAPE ONLY EXISTS FROM HERE Tap a constellation and turn it in three dimensions. The stars sit at their real distances, so the pattern comes apart as you rotate it. Orion looks like a figure because Bellatrix at 243 light years, Betelgeuse at 430 and Alnilam at 1,340 happen to fall on nearly the same line of sight from this one planet. WHAT IS UP TONIGHT • 5,080 stars and all 88 constellations, drawn for your latitude and the current minute • The planets, and the Moon with its real phase • All 110 Messier objects at true apparent size, each saying honestly whether you need binoculars — or whether it is worth looking at all • Meteor showers, only on the nights one is actually running, with an honest expected rate rather than the headline number • A time scrubber, so you can see what the sky does later tonight • The Milky Way and the zodiacal light, drawn from real models and tied to how dark your sky is HONEST ABOUT WHAT YOU WILL SEE Stargazer does not draw a perfect dark-sky view and let you find out later. Tell it roughly how dark your sky is and the chart thins out to match — from a city centre where the Milky Way is simply gone, to a proper dark site where it is the best thing up there. NO ACCOUNT, NO SIGN-UP The astronomy is computed on your device from a bundled star catalogue. There is no login, nothing to create, and the chart needs no connection — it works in a field with no signal. Stargazer is free. A one-off purchase removes the adverts. The astronomy is identical either way.