SkySafari 5 Plus App Reviews

Before smartphones, a paper star atlas or field guide seemed like a treasure trove. But this is in another category altogether. Its like a big desktop atlas, plus a personal planetarium, plus a big, illustrated astronomy encyclopedia, all in your pocket. Definitely buy it, you wont regret it!

Orbit mode can fly to Andromeda and back in less than a minute. Also shows relative positions of planets in their orbits. We can see that astrological events like planets coming close has no astronomical significance. They merely align in a line of sight from earth. Ability to show planets in the past is also amazing. The speed of recalculation is incredible. I did not get the discount offered but I have no regrets in supporting such great products. Starship enterprise never had it so good.

Love this app. Using it with Celestron Nextstar telescope to find objects for viewing and planning nights events. Very easy to use.

I use the app to plan observing sessions and to learn more about the objects Im seeing through my telescope.

This is a great app, especially for the amateur deep space photographer!

This app has so much to it and I have only touched the surface. I look forward to using it so much in the future. Love the coordinates feed for comets, sats and others. Great AP and you wont be disappointed!

When I point my phone to the north, SkySafari shows me the sky to the west. Im not impressed!

Best star app gets even better!

Lots of great additions to an already great program. One of the biggest ones for me is iCloud syncing of observation lists, since I’ll sometimes thinking of things to add while I’m at work with my iPhone, but I mainly use my iPad when I’m using the scope. Tonight at a Glance is another big addition I’ve been waiting for a while, but I wish there was a way to sort it by rise times. There are also some minor touches, like more subtle constellation lines, but much of it is still the same great program for finding things in the night sky and controlling telescopes.

As a owner of all prior skysafari products including the skyfi/skywire, Im happy to see progressive improvements in the latest version. Naturally, I upgraded to 5, and it is a worthwhile upgrade. Tonights best is a worthy addition, which I used to use a different app for. The plus version has telescope control, which if you have not tried will change your life. Trying to decide between plus and pro? While the plus is adequate for most average astronomers, the pro includes a larger database, 3D Galaxy view, higher resolution moon map, Milky Way sky charts. Hi res object images, and significantly higher lesser known deep sky objects.

Hi all. Ive used previous versions of SkySafari, and I actually have both Plus and Pro. I use Pro on my 64 GB iPad, but stick a copy of Plus on my aging, space-constrained 16 GB iPhone 5S. Why? The main difference is app size. Pro has a gig of data that I mostly dont use, Plus is about 1/4 the size and has basically all the same functions. Sure, some of the pictures are a little fuzzier, and I dont see every star in the heart of the Orion Nebula ... but, honestly, 3 million stars, or whatever, is really more than enough :-) It controls my Celestron Evolution telescope too, over Wi-Fi. Cool. Altho if Im actually serious enough to take out the scope, Ill use Pro on the iPad. This is what I use for casual camping trips, or just whenever Im walking down the street with my girl, and she asks me, "Whats that star up there"? Gets me a lot of bonus points. If you know what Im saying. OK, so whats new? In general, similar to version 4, but a lot of tweaks to look and feel. I like the little preview icons. I like the bigger Moon. It seems faster. The compass is WAY better now, which is especially useful for me cause thats what I use on the phone (as opposed to Pro on my iPad) most often. The iCloud sync makes it a lot easier to copy all my stuff between my iPhone and my iPad. Also, I gotta give props to Bill in Tech Support. That guy answers every email I have, within minutes, and on weekends. Does he ever sleep? Insane. Anyhow - get it. Blows all competition out of water.

I have purchased every new SkySafari version, and it astounds me how thorough and comprehensive they are compared to other Astronomy programs. This one doesnt disappoint! Well done, guys!

I like the new search feature where you can see a thumbnail of the object. Constellation display looks better. The iCloud Sync of Observing lists is a nice addition as well. Overall an excellent update.

Ive used Sky Safari for quite some time now and have always found it to be an excellent app. This upgrade makes it easier to use and has added some nice functionality to an already excellent program. I have both the plus and pro version and find the plus version the ideal compromise for use on a 16gb iPhone. The new. Design seems to me to maximize the limited screen size on the phone and it does seem to launch and run faster the version 4. I like the addition of the satellite and iridium flares to the program as that gives me a chance to free up some more space by getting of a couple of other apps, which are now redundant. Graphics run smoothly and are improved over version 4. The addition of the online available observing lists is also a nice touch as is the ability to use google drive or iCloud. Overall still the best and gets better with each version!

I have owned version 4 of this app for close to a year now. I have said that its the best astro software that Ive ever had. Well, that is no longer true. The developers of this app deemed that its time for a worthy successor - version 5. I have been playing with it for the greater part of the day, and still havent found any bug yet. Most possibly because most of the bugs have been found and fixed during the release of the Pro version several days ago. The first thing that I noticed that is different is the additional 2 buttons below, the Tonight and Share. Im quite sure that I wouldnt be using the Share button too often. However, that probably would be the case for the Tonight button. Its a quick list of interesting list thats very handy for nights when theres only a limited time for observation. I also noticed that the moon is noticeably bigger than the one found in version 4. This is a nice touch since Ive always found that the moon was represented rather small in version 4. One other improvement in this version is that on the Search button the resulting window now only take half the the screen. To make things better, each item now has its corresponding images making it even easier to determine what a particular object is. There is one thing that I immediately wish was not changed: the color used on the outline of the constellation and also the color used in naming DSOs. Both are now in grey color which for some reason strains my eyes a little. This app packs a mean punch. Its chock full of information, that I could just sit and read about various celestial objects. What even better is the level of tech support that one can have upon purchase of this product. Any problem or issues, you can post to the SkySafari Yahoo Users Group. You are guaranteed to get an answer within 24hr at the most. Tim & Bill (most especially the later) are the principal software engineers/developers of this app. They know this app like they know the back of their hands, and would answer any and all inquiries pertaining to the software. For the price of this app, its really a bargain - almost a steal in fact. Its the best astro software out there and the best product support one could hope for. Giving it a 9/10. The last point is so I could later add after I finished my full evaluation.

I’ve been using SkySafari plus for quite some time. I’ve been on version 3.85 and was pretty happy. Upgrading to SkySafari 5 plus just makes using this app much better. I love being able to enter my telescopes and eyepieces and having FOV indicators for them. I’m anxious to see if the telescope interface is even better than before. Will update the review if/when I find out. Went from pretty happy to EXTREMELY happy with this version. Great app, even better now.

Ive used this app since version 3.x, and it is, without doubt, the best Astro program out there - and Ive tried out more than a dozen. The only question is which of the three versions to get - compare the features. Support is phenomenal, as is the frequency of free updates. Look at their Yahoo newsgroup and youll see that the author stands by what he sells, and has a LOT of satisfied customers. Also, take advantage of this half price offer while it lasts.

This is a very nice app with many improvements over SkySafari 4 and it makes it well worth the cost to upgrade!

Well I wrote a much longer view and then did something bad and iOS Mae it go away so how. I was quite clever etc. oh well. Suffice it to say that I a, quite grateful to the skysafari crew for hooking up google drive cloud support. In addition,to being the best star chart program, the best constellation identifier, the most beautiful guide to the night sky, skysafari is also the best tool for collaborating with my club members that I have found. I can save set ups and they can download and share them with ease. Ok more later but wow this is great.

There is no way to say enough good things about this app, I love it. The menus are easy to use and the on screen controls are intuitive. The in-app help is amazingly good. The app is highly customizable without becoming overly complex. I use this program all the time to plan and record observing sessions, control my telescope to see what I planned, to simulate upcoming events, to look up information on celestial objects, and now to get alerts on Iridium flares and other events.