AstroPilot — your night sky, planned
AstroPilot is a free web app for amateur astronomers and stargazers. For your exact location it tells you whether tonight is worth observing — cloud at three heights, seeing, transparency, dew and moonlight, hour by hour — which objects your telescope, binoculars or naked eyes can show tonight, and when and where to look. It also has an interactive sky chart, an observing planner and an observing journal.
What AstroPilot does
- Tonight: a 0–100 verdict for the night from an astronomy-specific forecast, a 7-night outlook, hour-by-hour cloud, seeing and transparency, a cloud map with live satellite images and the week's cloud forecast on one slider, the Moon, the planets and their moons, comets, meteor showers, eclipses, space-station passes and aurora chances.
- Sky chart: a live all-sky chart for your place and time, with stars, constellations, the planets, their moons and deep-sky objects, a time slider and search.
- Explore: 841 deep-sky objects — every Messier and Caldwell object, bright NGC/IC galaxies, nebulae and clusters, and classic double stars — plus the planets and their moons, ranked for your sky darkness, your instrument and tonight's Moon.
- Plan: an observing run ordered so objects that set first come first, and a dark-sky calendar.
- Journal and achievements: an observing log with photos, and observing programs such as the Messier and Caldwell lists.
- Gear and locations: your telescopes, eyepieces, Barlows and filters with magnification and exit pupil, and your observing sites with sky darkness estimated from the light-pollution atlas.
Popular objects
- M 3 (NGC 5272)
- M 5 (NGC 5904)
- Butterfly Cluster (M 6)
- Ptolemy's Cluster (M 7)
- Lagoon Nebula (M 8)
- Wild Duck Cluster (M 11)
- Hercules Globular Cluster (M 13)
- M 15 (NGC 7078)
- Omega Nebula (M 17)
- Trifid Nebula (M 20)
- M 22 (NGC 6656)
- Dumbbell Nebula (M 27)
- Andromeda Galaxy (M 31)
- Triangulum Galaxy (M 33)
- M 35 (NGC 2168)
- M 37 (NGC 2099)
- M 41 (NGC 2287)
- Orion Nebula (M 42)
- Beehive Cluster (M 44)
- Pleiades (M 45)
- Whirlpool Galaxy (M 51)
- Ring Nebula (M 57)
- Black Eye Galaxy (M 64)
- M 65 (NGC 3623)
AstroPilot is free and works without an account; a free account saves your locations, gear and observing log. How AstroPilot works.