Lunar Observer vs Astrolabe

Track the Moon in breathtaking detail. Lunar Observer puts professional-grade astronomical calculations in your pocket — from moonrise and moonset times, illumination percentage, and solar and lunar eclipses, all the way to the Hijri calendar. Everything is computed with absolute precision based on your exact geographic location. PRECISE MOON DATA • Current moon phase with a live readout of illumination percentage and libration. • Sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset times accurate to the second. • Celestial coordinates: altitude, azimuth, and elongation from the Sun. • Distance from Earth, angular diameter, and moon age. 24-HOUR TIMELINE Scrub through the hours with the slider to see exactly where the Moon sits above your horizon at any moment — from the instant it rises to the moment it sets. CHOOSE YOUR MOON Pick between real NASA imagery (per-date photographs from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, covering 2022–2026 and updated each new year) — or use a live 3D model built from the actual LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) terrain data, with real libration and earthshine on the dark side (recommended for years not covered by NASA's photos). ECLIPSES Comprehensive coverage of every upcoming solar and lunar eclipse, with local circumstances computed for your coordinates. See whether each event is visible from where you are, along with timings from start to finish, eclipse magnitude, and the Moon's altitude at maximum. HIJRI CALENDAR A monthly view of the Hijri calendar with moon-phase markers, anchored to your local timezone so the Hijri date rolls over correctly no matter where you are in the world. NOTIFICATIONS Optional alerts for tonight's moonrise and moonset, the full moon, the supermoon, solar and lunar eclipses visible from your location, the day-29 Hijri crescent watch, and a daily moon brief at the time you choose. All local on your device, with no notification servers. AUTHENTIC ARABIC INTERFACE Full right-to-left Arabic localization, with an option for Arabic-Indic numerals (٠١٢٣…) or a switch to Western digits, and authentic astronomical terminology — محاق, هلال, بدر, كسوف, خسوف — free from clunky machine translation. Arabic day and month names appear throughout the app. GET STARTED GUIDE A short, friendly walkthrough on first launch that shows you how to navigate the timeline, set your location, explore the Hijri month, and turn on notifications. You can re-open it anytime from the "?" mark in Settings. PRIVACY FIRST Your location data never leaves your device. No tracking, no analytics, no account required. Technical note: the app's calculations are powered by NASA's JPL DE440 ephemeris — the same high-precision model used by NASA Horizons and spacecraft navigation — with the VSOP87 and ELP/MPP02 algorithms as a fallback. Sub-arc-second accuracy, with coverage from 1549 to 2650.

Astrolabe turns your iPhone into a window on the heavens. Hold it up and the Sun, Moon, planets, stars, constellations, and even the International Space Station appear in augmented reality, placed exactly where they really are in your sky — for your location, at any moment in time. Drag the time scrubber to watch the Sun glide along its arc from sunrise to sunset, or pick any date — past or future — and see how the sky looked, or will look. Tap any body to read its altitude, azimuth, rise and set times, magnitude, distance, and the Moon's exact phase. Tap the empty sky to hide every control and just look. Astrolabe is built on precise astronomy (the SwiftAA / Meeus algorithms and an SGP4 satellite propagator), so positions are accurate to far better than you can point a phone. And it's honest about its one real limit: the iPhone compass. When the magnetometer drifts — indoors, near metal, in a reinforced building — a one-tap "Align to Sun" calibration locks the sky to reality. FEATURES • Live AR sky: Sun, Moon, and every planet at their true positions • Time travel: scrub the day or jump to any historical or future date • ~5,000 stars and the full set of constellation figures • ISS and bright-satellite tracking from live orbital data • Correct Moon phase, rise/set/transit, twilight, and golden-hour times • A "Today" timeline of every sky event, tap to jump there • Search any body and a live find-arrow that guides you to it • Daily trajectory arcs, cardinal markers, and a horizon grid • One-tap Sun/Moon calibration that bypasses compass error • View the sky from any place on Earth with a manual location • A clean Liquid Glass interface with light, dark, and night modes Works fully offline for the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars — only live satellite data needs a connection (and is cached). No account, no ads, no tracking. Augmented reality requires a recent iPhone with ARKit support.