Why I built ASTRO Tracker
A short note about turning night-sky planning into a simpler field decision.
I started ASTRO Tracker because a lot of night-sky planning happens in the gaps between tools.
One app can tell you about moon phase. Another can help with dark skies. Another can help estimate when the Milky Way is worth looking for. Another can show an ISS pass or a planet window. All of that is useful, but the decision I usually care about is simpler: is tonight worth going out, and where should I go?
That is the shape of ASTRO Tracker. It is not meant to replace advanced astronomy software. It is meant to be a lightweight field-planning layer: nearby places, useful sky signals, and enough context to make a call.
The product challenge is trust. Location matters a lot. A good result for the wrong location is still a bad result. That is why the next version needs to be much clearer about whether it is using a default location, a detected location, or one I manually set.
The other product challenge is restraint. It is easy to keep adding data. It is harder to decide which signals actually help someone leave the house with more confidence. For now, I care most about darkness, moonlight, Milky Way visibility, planets, ISS opportunities, and whether the result feels understandable on a phone.
The goal is simple: make it easier to choose a sky plan without spending the whole night planning.