Introducing Asteria, the successor to the Nightshift app
A few years ago, I developed the stargazing app Nightshift for Android. Over time, I’ve received many requests asking whether I could make Nightshift available for iOS and even the web. To meet this demand, I’ve been working on Nightshift’s cross-platform successor: Asteria!
Asteria is a free web-based personal stargazing assistant and planetarium, which means you can use it in your web browser without needing to install anything. The app works on both your phone and tablet/laptop. If you’d like to add it to your home screen or app menu, you can do so by selecting Add to home screen or Install app from the browser’s menu.
I’m still in the process of transferring all features from Nightshift to Asteria, so not everything is available yet. But I thought it would be fun to let you all take a look while I improve the app and fix a few bugs here and there.
You can try out the app using this link: https://asteria.waddensky.com/.
Features
- Fully web-based, no need to install
- Discover what the night sky looks like from your location
- Find the best nights to go stargazing and discover when your favourite celestial objects are visible
- Large database with planets, stars, deep-sky objects, meteor showers and other interesting targets
- Weather forecast with multi-model cloud cover comparison
- Daily celestial events such as lunar phases, meteor shower peaks and conjunctions, including the best times to observe them
- Direct links to object information and observations on Wikipedia and DeepskyLog
- Share a link to your favourite celestial objects and phenomena using the Share buttons
Let me know what you think, and as always, clear skies!