SkySafari - Astronomy App

Simulation Curriculum Corp.

In-app purchases

About this app

Note: Version 7 of SkySafari is now available and includes new exciting features. Search for "SkySafari Astronomy" in the Play Store.

SkySafari is a powerful planetarium that fits in your pocket, puts the universe at your fingertips, and is incredibly easy to use!

Simply hold your device to the sky and quickly locate planets, constellations, satellites, and millions of stars and deep sky objects. Packed with interactive information and rich graphics, discover why SkySafari is your perfect stargazing companion under the night sky.

Notable Features:

• Ever wanted to know what the sky looked like in 500 B.C.? What about in 2190? With SkySafari, you can simulate the night sky from anywhere on Earth many years in the past or future! Animate meteor showers, comet approaches, transits, conjunctions, and other celestial events.

• Rich graphics unlike you’ve ever seen before! See galaxies, constellations, and more in stunning and vivid detail. Plus, optional constellation illustrations that will blow your mind.

• Just browsing the sky for something to look for? Check out the Tonight’s Best feature, which tells you which objects you’ll get the best view of tonight.

• Raise your device to the sky and SkySafari will find stars, constellations, planets, and more! The star chart updates automatically with your real time movements for the ultimate stargazing experience.

• Night Vision – Preserve your eyesight after dark.

• Locate the Sun, Moon, or Mars from our extensive database and track the arrow to be directed to their exact locations in the sky in front of you. See spectacular views of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets!

• Learn about the history, mythology, and science of the heavens! Browse from hundreds of object descriptions, astronomical photographs, and NASA spacecraft images. Plus, stay up-to-date with SkyWeek for information about all major sky events every day – miss nothing!

• Watch animated meteor showers with complete viewing information & spectacular graphics.

• View 120,000 stars; over 200 star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies; all major planets and moons; and dozens of asteroids, comets, and satellites, including the International Space Station (ISS).

• Orbit Mode – Leave the Earth’s surface behind, and fly like a NASA space probe through the solar system (requires in-app purchase).

• Much more!

New in Version 6:

1) Complete support for Android 8. We’ve got you covered and release regular updates.

2) Clouds and astronomy, two words that rarely go together. SkySafari 6 will now (optionally) back up all your settings files and make it easily accessible on multiple devices as well as from our new web interface, LiveSky.com.

3) Redesigned toolbar, now with the ability to hide. Invisibility powers, activate!

4) Configurable font sizes - having trouble telling if that number is a 5 or a 6? Just make it bigger!

5) Better control of magnitude limits - for example, you can select to not see stars on the app that you can’t see with your naked eye!

6) Improved the databases!

7) Updated information for comets and asteroids!

8) Now the moon looks better when you zoom out! 🌚

Optional Feature:

Cosmos Collection: In-app purchase allows you to travel to other planets and stars, visualize the 3D location of deepsky objects in our galaxy, and listen to hours of audio guided tours of the heavens.

The Cosmos Collection includes:

Orbit Mode
Lift off from the Earth and travel to the planets, moons and stars.

Guided Audio Tours
Listen to more than four hours of audio narration to learn the history, mythology, and science of the heavens.

Galaxy View
Visualize the 3-D location of stars and deep sky objects in the Milky Way, our home galaxy.

Pronounce
The pronunciation guide in SkySafari will help you learn how to correctly pronounce the names of hundreds of celestial objects from different categories such as stars, constellations and planets.

Ratings and reviews

Great tool with lots of useful features. Very helpful for astrophotography and planning for rocket launch photography. I'm kind of frustrated when it keeps switching from manual movement (pinching and dragging) to auto movement (based on phone position/tilt), but that may be user error on my part. Restarting the app seems to solve it. Otherwise 5 stars.

I got new phone and loaded SkySafari. I went outside and held it up and it said the moon was straight ahead. Nope. 90 degrees to the left! Then I realized I hadn't inputted my location. After that it was spot on. Great app. I've told many about the app. Too bad there's not a knob to dial down the city lights! A great tool when you can escape the city.

My favorite astronomy app, after trying 5-6 others. I like being able to toggle the compass. Descriptions are very informative. I like that you can set it to notify you of events (like satellites/planets rising). My only issue is that, although I've disabled sound for notifications via Android 8.0, notifications still have a sound. I'd rather be able to set it to vibrate or just silent, but still have a notification icon. Other than that, no issues and super useful!

What's new

6.8.6.15: Improvements to initial data download. More reliable, removed excess notifications.