iCSC: Clear Sky Chart Viewer 4+

This app gives you timely information about sky conditions for night sky observations across the United States. That said, not all observatory names tell you about their location. This is never a problem if you only plan to frequent ones that are near you and few in number, however, if you’d like to travel and plan out night sky observations along your trips the location (geographic) information is not contained in the name of each observatory. It’s kind of like someone only telling you the name of the street or city they live in. If their are multiple locations that have that street or city name, the usefulness of that information is quickly diminished. Adding GPS coordinates might help, but so would a road, city and state. If not that, then allow for notes in the favorites list on each entry so you would not need to enter the site report and then look to find it on the map. A very useful add to the app would be to make use of location information provided by cell and ip to see a list of reporting observatory’s nearby.

We have used CSC for over 20 years, and it has been consistently the most accurate forecast out there! Updates occur daily, and sometimes, seems to be more frequent than that. Seldom if ever significantly wrong, and if you want your own map, it is a simple process of uploading your coordinates. My go to whenever considering observing.

I use this for astronomy and astrophotography to help plan my time under the stars. It’s very accurate even though the closest data collection site is 20 miles away. I use this app constantly, very simple to use, and has all the information you need to consider for your Astro Endeavors.