Astrophotography planner for iPhone

Stop guessing what to shoot — and how long to expose it.

Night Logic scores every target above you tonight against your sky, your location, and the exact telescope, mount, and camera you own. Then it hands you a real exposure plan: sub length, shot count, and how good the stack will actually get.

Download on the App Store See how it works
Free to start No account, no tracking Works anywhere on Earth
3,000+
Deep-sky targets
110+
Scopes & cameras built in
16
Nights of forecast
10
Factors per grade

What it does

Every answer is calculated for your rig, not a generic one.

Most planners tell you what is up. Night Logic tells you what is worth your night — because it knows your aperture, your focal length, your mount’s tracking, your sensor, and how bright your sky is going to be.

Tonight’s targets, ranked

Everything above your horizon tonight is scored and sorted, so the best thing you could point at is the first thing you see. Nothing is up? It says so, instead of burying it.

A real exposure plan

PRO

Suggested sub length with the reason it is capped there, the share of frames you’ll lose to star drift, and an integration ladder showing what two, four, or eight hours of data actually buys you.

Grades you can interrogate

Every score opens into the ten factors behind it — optical speed, framing, field rotation, sub-exposure efficiency, moonlight — each one explained in plain language. No black-box number.

Live sky conditions

Cloud cover, seeing, transparency, moon phase and illumination, and the best window tonight — pulled live for your coordinates. Pro extends it to a 16-night outlook so you can plan the whole run.

Scientifically grounded 3D

Fly to any object and see it rendered in real 3D — galaxies, nebulae, clusters, and planets, positioned by actual distance. Know what you are chasing before you set up in the cold.

Framing on your sensor

See the target drawn inside your actual field of view, at your focal length, on your sensor format. Find out it won’t fit here, not at 1 a.m. with the mosaic already half shot.

Your sky darkness, estimated

A Bortle class is derived from where you are observing, and every score respects it — or override it if you know your site better than a model does. Save separate locations for home and the dark site.

Your gear, already in there

Forty telescopes and seventy-plus cameras come preloaded with real specs, plus binoculars, mount types, and sensor formats. Anything missing you can enter by hand, and keep as many rigs as you own.

Nothing leaves your phone

No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no ads. Your location and equipment live in local storage on your device — the only thing sent anywhere is the coordinates needed to fetch a weather forecast.

The part nobody else answers

“How long do I expose for?”

It is the question that costs imagers the most nights, and the honest answer depends on maybe a dozen things about your setup and the sky above it. Night Logic works through all of them and gives you a number — along with the reason it landed there.

  • Sub length that respects your mount. Capped by tracking accuracy, sky glow, or the point where one lost frame costs too much — and it tells you which.
  • Drift loss, up front. The percentage of subs you should expect to throw away, so your shot count is the real one.
  • An integration ladder. What one hour gets you versus four versus eight, on this target, with this rig, under this sky.
  • Tonight’s time budget. Whether the window actually banks enough usable exposure to reach a viable stack before dawn.
  • Planets get their own math. Bright targets switch to lucky imaging — frame exposure in milliseconds, and how long you can record before rotation smears the stack.

Under the grade

Ten factors, all of them yours.

A target fit score is not a vibe. It is these, weighed against tonight’s conditions and your equipment, and every one of them opens up to tell you what it measured and why it mattered.

Achievable quality tonight
Optical speed (f-ratio)
Framing (focal length)
Sky darkness
Peak altitude
Imaging altitude window
Field rotation
Sub-exposure efficiency
Seeing vs. focal length
Moonlight

Not shooting tonight? Leave the camera out and the app grades for the eyepiece instead — aperture fit, brightness against sky glow, altitude, hours above the horizon, and moonlight.

Setup takes about a minute

Four answers, and you’re set up for good.

STEP 01

Where you observe

Use your device location or search for a site. Everything — what is up, when it peaks, how dark it gets — is computed from here, in that location’s own time zone.

STEP 02

What you look through

Pick your telescope or binoculars, the mount underneath, and the camera if you shoot. Aperture, tracking, and sensor drive every number that follows.

STEP 03

Go shoot the plan

Open it at dusk and the ranking is already rebuilt for tonight. Tap a target for its exposure plan, framing preview, and viewing window.

Pricing

Free is genuinely usable.

Planets, the full Messier catalog, tonight’s conditions, and equipment-fit grading cost nothing and never expire. Pro adds the depth.

Free

$0
No account, no trial timer, no ads.
  • All planets and the 108 Messier objects
  • Tonight’s live sky conditions and moon
  • Target fit and equipment grading
  • 3D object views, framing preview, viewing windows
  • Unlimited saved equipment configurations
Download free

Pro

Monthly, yearly, or lifetime
Current prices are shown in the App Store.
  • Everything in Free
  • The full exposure plan — sub length, drift loss, integration ladder
  • 2,900+ NGC and IC objects
  • 16-night weather and target outlook
  • Lifetime option — buy once, done
Get Night Logic

Questions

Before you download.

Do I need a telescope to use it?

No. Naked eye and binoculars are both first-class options in setup, and the app grades for what you actually have. Without a camera it scores targets for visual observing rather than imaging.

My scope or camera isn’t in the list.

You can enter any rig by hand — aperture, focal length, mount type, sensor format and resolution — and it is treated exactly like a preloaded one. There is also a calculator for filling in specs you only half know.

Where does the weather data come from?

Open-Meteo, queried live for your observing coordinates. Cloud cover, wind (which drives the seeing estimate), humidity, precipitation probability, and sunrise/sunset all come from there; moon phase and illumination are computed on the device.

Is there an Android version?

Not yet. Night Logic is iPhone-only today.

Does it need an internet connection?

Only for weather and for searching locations. Target positions, altitudes, rise and set times, framing, and the exposure math are all computed on your phone, so the planning still works without a signal at a dark site — it just falls back to your last-known conditions.

What happens to my data?

It stays on your phone. There is no account, no server of ours, no analytics SDK, and no advertising. Deleting the app deletes everything it stored. The Privacy Policy spells out the specifics.

How do I cancel a subscription?

Through Apple, in Settings › your name › Subscriptions on your iPhone. Subscriptions are billed by Apple, so cancellation and refunds run through them rather than through us.

Clear night coming?

Set up once, and every night after that opens with the answer already worked out.

Download on the App Store