Ad Astra vs Deep Sky Scanner

Per aspera ad astra — through hardships to the stars. Ad Astra turns your iPhone into a living planetarium. Raise your phone and the sky above you comes alive: every star drawn from real astronomical catalogs, constellations traced with their figures, planets and the Moon exactly where they truly are, and satellites drifting overhead — all rendered on the GPU at up to 120 Hz for a perfectly smooth sky. THE LIVE SKY • Point your phone anywhere — motion sensors aim the view where you aim the device • Stars from the Hipparcos and Yale Bright Star catalogs, scaled by real brightness • A light-pollution slider: slide from a mountain dark-sky site to a bright city and watch the stars thin realistically • Night-vision mode preserves your dark adaptation under a real sky • Atmosphere, photographic horizon, and an immersive mode that fades every control away MEET THE STARS UP CLOSE Tap any star, planet, moon, or satellite for a rotatable 3D portrait — stars reconstructed from their real spectral data, planets and moons with detailed texture maps, Saturn with its rings, and real photographs of the ISS, Hubble, and more. Every object carries at-a-glance facts, stories for the famous ones, and a live Wikipedia summary. FLY THE SOLAR SYSTEM A free-flying 3D solar system with real orbital mechanics. Scrub the timeline through days, months, and years and watch the orbits evolve. Overview and map modes make it feel like a navigation app for space. TRAVEL THE MILKY WAY Fly around a GPU point-cloud model of our galaxy: spiral arms, globular clusters, companion galaxies, and the black hole at the center — then run the galactic clock and watch the arms shear over millions of years. RELIVE LEGENDARY MISSIONS Replay Vostok 1, Apollo 8, Apollo 11, the Voyagers, and the Mars rovers: real launch photography fading into a live trajectory simulation with a mission HUD showing altitude, speed, and distance in your local units. The sky is up there every night. Ad Astra shows you what you are looking at.

Point your phone at the sky and know instantly what’s worth imaging. Deep Sky Scanner turns your device into an aiming tool for the Seestar S50, scanning your field of view and ranking every galaxy, cluster, and nebula by altitude, brightness, and how well it’ll actually fit your frame. No more guessing what’s up, no star-hopping, no wasted setup time on a target that’s too big or too faint for tonight’s sky. FEATURES • Live sky scan — see every object in view as you move your phone, tracked with full 3D orientation for steady accuracy even near the zenith • Ranked target lists — sorted by altitude trajectory, brightness, or best overall fit for your Seestar S50 • Frame-fit scoring — know before you start whether an object will actually fit the frame, not spill past the edges • Ascending/descending badges — see whether a target is climbing toward better altitude or already past its peak • Planning mode — drag the time slider to preview the sky at any hour and plan your session in advance • Per-object imaging notes — integration-time guidance by magnitude, edge-on galaxy detection, and nearby-companion flags • Full OpenNGC catalog with offline fallback — works even without a signal • Additional catalogs are available and can be optionally selected on the settings page • Supports the Seestar family of telescopes Built by a Seestar owner, for Seestar owners.