The best night-sky apps, according to park rangers and aurora chasers

Where was I when a magenta aurora borealis could be seen as far south as Florida? Indoors and not paying enough attention. Thankfully, there are multiple apps for that.

“Many visitors come to Dark Sky Parks for a chance to see the Milky Way, since 80 percent of Americans can't see it from their hometown,” says Jackie Rabb, a Mesa Verde National Park ranger and night sky lead at this certified International Dark Sky Park. Apps can help you “figure out the best time to view it and help you conceptualize the idea that the stars move throughout the day and night.” Some apps allow you to scroll ahead in time to see how the sky will appear that night. “That can really help visitors be prepared for what they will see when the sun goes down,” says Rabb.

A primary challenge for dark sky program leaders and participants is that the sky “changes all the time, and you have to stay on top of it,” says Daniel Huecker, field director for the Sequoia Parks Conservancy, the “booster club” for California’s Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. “That's where these digital tools have been fantastic.” The conservancy runs stargazing, moon-gazing and “wonders of the night sky” experiences at the park.

Should you look at apps while you’re stargazing? Rangers and guides have differing opinions.

“If you've never seen the dark sky before—like most people—it can be overwhelming,” says ranger Jimmy Burch, who runs weekly star parties at Dead Horse State Park in Utah, designated as a Dark Sky Park by DarkSky International. “There are so many stars shining above that you might not be able to pick out even the Big Dipper.” Having their phone in hand helps to ground some people, he says. “You can maintain a connection with the nature around you while using your comfort blanket of your phone.” Dead Horse sometimes partners with nearby Canyonlands National Park and Arches National Park for events, like the Southeast Utah AstroFest.

Rabb, however, is concerned that “an app might overwhelm new stargazers,” and recommends attending a ranger- or expert-led presentation first to “get a strong foundation for viewing the night sky in the future.” Mesa Verde protects nearly 5,000 Ancestral Pueblo archeology sites and includes indigenous night sky stories in many of their guided experiences.

Huecker also recommends “an unmediated connection with the night sky” without your phone. Most people gasp when first encountering the dark sky in Sequoia and Kings Canyon, he says. “It's almost like this hidden part of the world that was always right there is suddenly revealed to you.” After that experience, people can learn more from their phones later.

Here are the top apps these park rangers, astrotourism guides, aurora chasers, and astrophotographers recommend. Pro tip: Download them before you go because most dark sky locations don’t have cell service.

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1. Stellarium

Stellarium “works like a camera and tells you exactly what you're looking at,” says Burch. The app enables you to zoom in on any object and learn more, and the red light option protects delicate night vision. The app also has a cool “sky cultures” feature that lets you to see the sky through different historic and cultural perspectives, from ancient Egyptian to Navajo to three types of Arabic. Several guides mentioned the excellence of its multi-platform desktop version, particularly to help plan your night time excursions.

2. Astrospheric

This app may take a minute to decipher but it provides essential information before any excursion. “I use it the day-of when planning star parties to gage sky quality,” says Burch. The cloud and radar animations allow you to see overcast skies or precipitation on the way and adjust your viewing accordingly. Tap on features to access cloud cover, transparency, temperature, and jet stream (wind) overlays on your map from multiple forecast models. It also shares moon phases and both sun and moon rise and set times. 

Too often, says Guillaume Poulin, the educational coordinator at Parc National du Mont-Mégantic in Quebec, visitors show up wanting to see the Milky Way during a full moon phase. Visibility “is always better between last quarter and first quarter, so one week before and one week after new moon.” Ten miles from the Maine border, this park was the world’s first International Dark Sky Reserve. All programs are presented in French, but they can answer questions in English. This summer, the park opens a new observatory which will include sky viewing through a glass section and powerful new telescopes.

For observing, “it’s always good to go as far as you can from larger urban areas,” advises Poulin. Astrospheric includes a color-coded map showing light pollution across North America, and its transparency function that lets you know if wildfire smoke might impair your vision or if humidity might obscure fainter objects.

3. SpaceWeatherLive

This app is northern lights-chaser Chris Ratzlaff’s “go-to for active aurora conditions.” A NASA citizen scientist, he founded and oversees the nearly 300,000-member Facebook group Alberta Aurora Chasers that Travel Alberta recommends to star and aurora-gazers. “SpaceWeatherLive offers an easy-to-consume summary while allowing you to dig into the details if you want and helps educate you about the details,” says Ratzlaff. Best of all, you can set it to notify you when conditions are prime for aurora viewing.

Poulin appreciates the live images of sun spots and flares the app offers. You can be alerted “if there's a solar flare, if there's a coronal mass ejection, or when you reach a certain level of geomagnetic activity,” he says. Last November 11, Poulin’s phone was vibrating hourly, due to the sun’s high geomagnetic activity. As we’re on the downslope of the recent, 11-year solar maximum cycle (cycle 25), downloading this app may be your best chance to catch the aurora before the sun’s activity declines during its solar minimum cycle. The next solar maximum cycle (26) is expected to begin between January 2029 and December 2032.

“Even though I've seen the aurora hundreds and thousands of times, it's different every time,” says Ratzlaff, who often guides educational programs about the aurora. “Each one has its own personality and its own presentation. The only thing better than seeing it yourself for the first time is to be with someone who is seeing it for the first time.”

He also recommends using your phone for aurora photos because sensitivity to colors varies from person to person, and your phone may pick up shades your eyes don’t.

(Chasing the northern lights? Here’s what forecasters can—and can’t—tell you)

4. Photo Pills

If you want to capture stunning dark sky images with a real camera, Don Riddle says to use Photo Pills. Riddle is an amateur photographer who taught free astrophotography courses at 10 national parks in 2025, including Great Basin National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. The app is particularly helpful in planning ahead for your photos, according to sun, moon, and Milky Way positions. It “gives you field of view, your exposure times, the phases of the moon, where the sun is and what it's doing,” Riddle says. He often helps visitors get that much-desired Milky Way shot. 

Learning to focus a camera in the dark, which must be done manually, is one of the most challenging parts Riddle assists with, along with using a long exposure. The app can help guide you in photographing star trails, eclipses, meteor showers and other astral events. The augmented reality mode enables you to overlay the Milky Way into a composition you want to capture, such as the moon reflected in water, and even suggests what your camera settings should be.

5. Other recommended apps and props

If you set out to explore without a ranger or guide, these experts also recommend these apps: 

SkyGuide and StarWalk 2's free versions are other star-gazing apps recommended by experts. NASA also offers additional apps about Earth and space, including Spot the Station, which locates the International Space Station (ISS), so you can predict when to see it overhead.

To stay on the trail at night, use the AllTrails-plus version; it gives you offline access to downloaded maps and then alerts you if you’ve taken a wrong turn off the path, essential information in the dark. Riddle also uses Gaia GPS to find the location of specific shots he wants and return safely to his motorcycle. 

Take your binoculars along on any sky-gazing excursion, says Peter Lipscomb, the park manager at Cerrillos Hills State Park in Arizona, who has guided night sky tours for 25 years. “Binoculars will show the Pleiades better than I can with a telescope,” he says. “It will show the Andromeda galaxy better.” The founder of Astronomy Adventures in the Santa Fe, New Mexico, area, Lipscomb offers 2.5-hour guided trips into the Galisteo Basin on Santa Fe’s Sky Railway StarGazer excursion.

On his tours Lipscomb also reflects on “what the night sky represents as a natural resource and as a cultural resource.” Such a grateful perspective may help us act to preserve our gasp-worthy darkness.

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