ASTRO Tracker

Planning a night-sky outing often requires stitching together too many signals: darkness, moonlight, Milky Way visibility, planets, ISS opportunities, distance, and location-specific context.

The hard part is not finding more data. The hard part is deciding whether tonight is worth leaving the house and where to go. ASTRO Tracker exists to make that decision easier.

Built first for me and people who want a lightweight way to plan skywatching or astrophotography without overplanning every session.

• Which nearby location is worth considering.
• Whether moonlight or darkness makes the night promising.
• Whether Milky Way, planet, or ISS visibility changes the plan.
• Whether the app is using the right location.

ASTRO Tracker should be a field tool, not a dashboard full of astronomy data.

It should help someone decide where to go and what is worth looking for.

• Location trust has to be explicit. If the app is using a default location, say so.
• Rank locations by decision usefulness, not by data completeness.
• Treat filters as confidence controls.
• Keep the experience mobile-friendly and glanceable.
• Avoid implying precision when the app is using a fallback or default.

At a high level, ASTRO Tracker combines a location input or default, nearby site list, sky-condition calculations, filter and scoring logic, result cards, and clear location-source status messaging.

The live tool provides a useful planning surface for skywatching and astrophotography. It now makes location source more explicit, especially when using a default location or a detected location. The next step is making saved, detected, and manually selected locations feel more durable across sessions.

• Saved locations.
• Better permission states for browser geolocation.
• Favorites for sites.
• Later: nightly checklist, calendar reminders, and session notes.

Have an idea or bug report? Request a feature.