Planetarium apps like Sky Guide have been around for a few years, and yet their use of augmented reality to point out you the celebrities still has the facility to hugely impress. Now ten years old, this latest version of Sky Guide, called Version X, has decided it is time to go free. Well, almost.
Sky Guide app: Specs
Operating System: iOS (iOS 15.0/iPadOS 15.0 and up, macOS 12.0 and up, Apple Watch, Apple Vision Pro (later in 2023)
Size: 324.1MB
Price: free with in-app purchases
Despite being stuffed with recent visualizations and plenty of up-to-the-minute content, Sky Guide now comes as a free download, though serious users will wish to download certainly one of its two in-app upgrades: Sky Guide Plus or Sky Guide Pro. Either way, what you get is well probably the greatest stargazing apps around.
Sky Guide app review
Sky Guide app: Pricing and Subscription
- Free to download
- Plus and Pro in-app purchases
- Free trials of Plus and Pro available
Originally launched in 2013, the most recent version of Sky Guide is the creation of Fifth Star Labs. Sky Guide Version X launched in 2021 and is available in a free version. Nevertheless, there are two add-on subscriptions available: Sky Guide Plus ($2.99 per 30 days or $19.99 per yr/£2.79 per 30 days or £17.99 per yr) and Sky Guide Pro ($4.99 per 30 days or $39.99 per yr/£4.49 per 30 days or £34.99 per yr). Sky Guide Plus dramatically increases the star and object catalog, offering 100x more stars, 10,000x more satellites and 100x zoom.
It also adds information on how light-polluted observing sites are, in addition to more advanced forecasts for meteor showers. Sky Guide Pro does all that and more, adding an enormous catalog of 1.7 billion stars, including double and variable stars, over 1 million deep-sky objects, exoplanets and 1,000x zoom. The Pro version also offers field-of-view visualization tools and cinematic tours.
Crucially, there is no have to upgrade blindly since each Sky Guide Plus and Sky Guide Pro include a one-week trial period, allowing you to cancel in the event you find that you simply don’t use the additional features. Should you’ve ever purchased Sky Guide before, you will retain the identical features you paid for.
Sky Guide app: User Interface
- Beautifully designed app
- Dynamic aurora effects
- Works on Apple Watch
Sky Guide looks incredible. Hold it as much as the sky in front of you and it displays the Milky Way and, only for fun, dynamic displays of the aurora borealis and aurora australis (though this could be toggled off). Brilliant stars and planets are labeled, with fainter objects revealed the more you pinch to zoom in on the night sky. There’s an AR mode to overlay this data via a smartphone’s camera, which is beneficial for identifying obstacles. On that rating, comes the pièce de résistance: an AR mode that uses the Lidar chip in Apple devices to substitute a ceiling for the night sky. It’s clever stuff, because it has the power to sub in realistic magnitudes (taking into consideration horizon haze) and, in fact, the all-important Night Vision mode to display every part in less damaging red light.
The planetarium page is uncluttered, with icons down the underside for Settings, Featured, Calendar and Search. Settings allow the toggling on and off of constellation lines, mythological constellation art (sadly, it’s Western/Ancient Greek only), object labels and satellites. Featured is a blog-style scrolling section of reports articles, a Constellation of the Month feature and Sky Sights of the Month round-ups.
Next comes Calendar, which begins with a bite-size forecast of if/while you’ll have a transparent sky after which presents a date-driven list of celestial events coming up — akin to moon phases, moon/planet conjunctions and meteor showers. Click on any of them and also you get a picture, an outline, some background information and, better of all, the prospect to examine it in Sky Guide’s planetarium. It’s useful to see exactly what might be visible for a lot of nights or weeks ahead, but it surely could be even higher in the event that they could possibly be saved to an observing list — and a notification configured.
Meanwhile, Search accommodates a link to Tonight’s Best, which incorporates planets, vibrant stars and constellations.
All the pieces is presented in a colourful, well-designed manner that never looks crowded or off-putting.
Sky Guide goes all-in on Apple devices and ignores Android. For now, meaning it’s available on iPhone and iPad, but additionally on Apple Watch where it shows quite a lot of easy screens — Earth with the position of the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit, the Sun with the most recent space weather reports, an easy clock face with a dynamic moon phase icon and a page giving a countdown to the following visible ISS pass.
Sky Guide also has a watch on the longer term. In June 2023 it featured in Apple’s Worldwide Development Conference 2023 Keynote as a fully-immersive version specifically for the forthcoming Apple Vision Pro spatial computer headset.
Sky Guide app: Key Features
- Get notifications of ISS and sky events
- Frequent astronomy news articles
- Database expands with in-app purchases
Sky Guide looks easy, uncluttered and is simple to make use of, but it surely’s filled with easy customization features. Probably the most useful, which is offered in the essential free version, is Notifications. Accessed via the Settings menu, it’s possible to set reminders for astronomical events (meteor showers, eclipses etc.) and satellite passes over your location by the ISS. Helpfully, it is also possible to tweak how much notice it gives you before each event is visible, set a ‘don’t disturb’ timer and opt in or out of notifications about news articles published on Sky Guide.
Those news articles, available across all versions of Sky Guide, come from astrophysicist and science communicator Jenifer Millard, PhD. (@DrJeniMillard on Twitter) and are at all times of top quality.
By default, Sky Guide has 24 constellations, 100 deep-sky objects and ISS tracking, which is probably going enough for casual stargazers, however the Plus and Pro in-app purchases are price considering for serious amateur astronomers. In addition to a bigger database, you get meteor shower forecasts tailored to your location and a Dark Sky Finder for the local area. Meanwhile, Pro expands the database further, adds exoplanets and Cinematic Tours and brings to life greyed-out options within the Settings menu for setting fields of view for equipment, an imaging calculator for understanding exposure times and the power to input coordinates.
Sky Guide app: Astrophotography Features
- Pro mode for deep-sky objects
- AR modes for locating targets
- Notifications for event alerts
Since Sky Guide identifies objects within the night sky, it’s useful for helping astrophotographers to orient a camera, though the Plus and Pro in-app purchases are advisable in the event you’re photographing deep-sky objects akin to nebulas. Just as essential to most might be the notifications for upcoming events — just remember to set the alert to an hour or more before the event in the event you need plenty of time to establish or to get to a particular location.
Should I download the Sky Guide app?
Should you’re after an app that offers you an easy-to-use, comprehensive and beautiful-looking planetarium, but which also comes with the most recent news articles about astronomy, Sky Guide is tough to beat. The customization options are great, in addition to the notifications about upcoming celestial events. Nevertheless, it is a shame that there aren’t any upgrades for WiFi telescope control and that future events cannot be saved to observing lists. Overall, Sky Guide is a very impressive app that may delight most casual stargazers and amateur astronomers alike.
If Sky Guide app is not for you
Should you want something more comprehensive than Sky Guide, then the apparent alternative is SkySafari 7 Pro (from $19.99/£18.99) for iOS and Android, which incorporates WiFi control of telescopes, including the most recent Celestron StarSense products. Even though it’s certainly one of the costlier stargazing apps around, SkySafari 7 Pro has a database of 100 million stars, 3 million galaxies right down to 18th magnitude, 750,000 solar system objects and each comet and asteroid ever discovered. It also has news and advice articles, though with more of a give attention to astrophotography than Sky Guide.
Should you’re after something free and like the concept of a pay-as-you-go app, Vito Technology’s Sky Tonight for iOS and Android offers an easy, minimalist design and data on the precise amount of cloud cover expected where you’re. You possibly can upgrade to Premium for a month for $0.99 (£0.79), which removes advertisements and beefs up the Visible Tonight and Calendar pages, with a lifetime subscription costing $5.99 (£4.99).