Star Archive

Picks tonight's targets for your aperture and sky — plans, guides, and logs.

What should I look at tonight? Star Archive picks objects your aperture can actually show under your site's sky — 1,272 objects judged in advance, so you don't drive out and find nothing there.

This is an app for visual astronomy — for people who look through a telescope or binoculars with their own eyes. Plan a session, read an observing guide for each object, and keep a logbook: it all flows in one line.

TONIGHT'S TARGETS, CHOSEN FOR YOU · Matched to your aperture (binoculars to large Dobsonians) and your site's sky darkness. · Choose the depth — a showpiece night, an easy stroll, or a deep dive. · Narrow by object type: galaxies only, no double stars, and so on. · Turn a recommendation straight into tonight's plan, or use it to fill an observing list.

ONE UNBROKEN NIGHT · Plan — gather tonight's objects, sorted by hour or by constellation, with rise, transit and set times, altitude and direction, and the Moon's phase. · At the eyepiece — move object to object, tick what you saw, leave ratings and notes. Notes can be dictated by voice. · Wrap-up — enter the night's conditions once (seeing, transparency, limiting magnitude, site) and they are written into every log of that night. · Logbook — revisit by night, or by object.

OBJECTS AND VISUAL GUIDES · 16,000+ objects — Messier, Caldwell, Herschel 400, NGC/IC, double and variable stars, asterisms, compact galaxy groups, and the solar system. · 2,400+ visual observing guides — how to star-hop to it, what shows at binocular, small, medium and large apertures, and advice on magnification and filters. · 4,600+ observing checkpoints — questions such as "can you see the bright core?" Rate them and compare with your past self next time.

OBSERVING LISTS · Messier 110, Caldwell, Herschel 400, 1,001 Celestial Wonders, seasonal double stars, Hickson compact groups, and more. · Build your own lists, group them into folders, and watch your progress on each. · Make a star-walk route from several objects; add it to a plan and the members follow in order at the eyepiece.

NIGHT MODE THAT PROTECTS YOUR DARK ADAPTATION · The whole screen turns red, with its own brightness control. Photos and sketches get a red veil too. · Shake the phone to toggle it. After sunset the app switches to a dark screen on its own.

STAR CHARTS · A built-in chart with more than 130,000 stars shows your planned objects among the constellations. · Works with SkySafari and Stellarium — aim at an object with one button, or send tonight's list to be highlighted on the chart.

SKETCHES AND KEEPING RECORDS · Attach your own sketches to an object and gather them into albums. · Move logs, lists and sketches in and out as spreadsheets, and carry everything to a new phone with a full backup.

ALSO · Tonight's cloud cover by the hour, with temperature, humidity and wind. · Planets, dwarf planets and asteroids in real time — position, rise and set, phase, next opposition or conjunction, and Jupiter's moon events. · Korean, English and Japanese.

Free. No ads, no purchases, no sign-up. Everything is stored on your device and never sent to a server (weather is the one exception). Location is used only to compute rise, set and altitude — and the app works from your saved site if you leave it off.

Made by one hobbyist observer. Tell me what's missing or wrong and I'll fix it.