New in 1.6.2 - 3 additional Saturn moons: Rhea, Iapetus and Enceladus, with correct position. - Correct axial tilt for Saturn, Mars and Neptune: rings and moons now follow the real tilted equatorial plane. Moon positions, phases and periods are calibrated against JPL Horizons. - Mars now has the correct surface rotation, and Neptune carries Triton on its real inclined retrograde orbit. - Venus, Jupiter and Saturn now shine as bright points in wide-angle view, just like in the real sky. - Atmospheric extinction near the horizon: the Moon, planets and deep-sky objects become dimmer and redder close to the horizon. - Right-click toggles the telescope on Mac. Improved - Eyepieces now dim extended objects realistically: a short eyepiece, such as 3.2 mm, is about 10× darker than a long eyepiece, such as 24 mm, for nebulae, galaxies, planets and the Moon. Fixed - Approach to tilted moons now lands on the actual orbit instead of the ecliptic shadow, with coplanar arrival. - Planets now sit correctly on their own orbit lines. Neptune in particular was visibly offset. - Calmer eyepiece image, with banding removed from the vignette and seeing filter. - iPad calendar: time wheels now scroll properly, with the clock paused while the picker is open.

NearLight 1.6.1: A More Realistic Night Sky This update brings the sky to life with authentic astronomical detail: - Dark-sky wonders. On clear, low-light nights you'll now see the faint zodiacal light along the ecliptic and a subtle airglow near the horizon, just like a real dark site. - Stars that twinkle. Scintillation makes stars shimmer near the horizon and hold steady overhead, while planets stay calm, exactly as in nature. - Earthshine. The Moon's night side glows with soft ashen light, brightest at crescent phase. - Real celestial events. Watch the Galilean moons cast their shadows across Jupiter's cloud tops at the correct times, and see Saturn's rings shadow the planet. - Truer optics. Planets show a softer, more natural day/night transition, and the telescope eyepiece now has a gentle field vignette and a whisper of color fringing at the edges. - Light Pollution (Bortle) control. A new slider recreates skies from pristine wilderness to bright city, dimming stars, the Milky Way, and deep-sky objects accordingly. - Launch from the sky. Point at a star or planet and start your journey straight from the ground view. - Your location, remembered. The app now saves your last observing spot. Plus smoother sky navigation, banding-free gradients, globular clusters that blend naturally into the background, and various stability fixes.

NearLight 1.6.0 The Deep-Sky Update - Human Eye View: A new telescope toggle shows deep-sky objects the way your dark-adapted eye would really see them: grey, faint and subtle. Image brightness follows the eyepiece like real glass. Prefer the colourful astrophoto look? It stays the default. - 24 new Messier photo objects embedded at the correct positions and sizes: Lagoon, Eagle, Omega, Trifid and Dumbbell Nebulae, the Triangulum, Whirlpool, Sunflower, Black Eye, Phantom, Pinwheel, Spindle and Sombrero Galaxies, the famous Bode's & Cigar pair (M81/M82), the Virgo trio M58–M60, and more. - Every star cluster rebuilt from real photographs — all 56 Messier open and globular clusters now match their reference photos: true colour mixes, the recognisable bright stars of each cluster in their real 1:1 positions, soft glows on the brightest members, and a gentle brightness rise as you zoom in. - 16k Milky Way: The sky background is now an all-sky panorama at four times the previous detail, precisely aligned to the stars (Mac and newer iPads). Fixes: - 7 Messier catalogue positions corrected (some were a few degrees off) - Buttery-smooth zooming and panning under the night sky - the iPad eyepiece keeps its size when rotating the device - plus a new telescope info button

What's New in 1.5.9 Explore more deep-sky wonders through the telescope - Point the Earth telescope at famous nebulae and galaxies, now shown as real imagery at their true place in the sky: the Lagoon (M8), Eagle (M16), Trifid (M20) and Dumbbell (M27) nebulae, plus the Triangulum (M33) and Whirlpool (M51) galaxies. Andromeda, Orion, the Crab and the Ring are sharper and better placed too. A truer night sky • All ~8,000 skydome stars now glow in their real spectral colours: orange-red Betelgeuse, blue-white Rigel and Vega, yellow Capella, with the brightest stars standing out as chunky orbs for a natural, Stellarium-style sky. • The Milky Way band now sits correctly against the stars, its bright galactic centre glowing behind Sagittarius where it belongs. Smoother, more polished • Looking around the skydome now runs at your display's full refresh rate (up to 120 Hz on ProMotion) for fluid panning. • The telescope eyepiece view keeps its size when you rotate an iPad to landscape. • Swapping eyepieces now gives a satisfying known tube sound. • changed one song to a more modern one. Fixed • A Solar-System mission no longer keeps running invisibly after you switch to the Earth view.

Look up through a telescope, right where you're standing. The Earth view's new telescope mode lets you observe the real night sky the way an amateur astronomer does: • Planets and moons are now clickable sky targets: pick them, or any star or Messier object, from the new Planets / Stars / Messier list, and the view slews straight to it. • EQ Tracking holds your target centred as the sky rotates, like an equatorial mount. • Manual focus: switch Autofocus off and rack the focus wheel by hand to find the perfect sharp point, every eyepiece change nudges it out, just like the real thing. • Redlight night-vision mode washes the whole app deep red to protect your dark-adapted eyes. • Zoom now reaches 20×, so you can inspect Andromeda and the Messier clusters without an eyepiece. Solar System: real mission physics. • Gravity-assist routes are rebuilt the way NASA plots them: two transfer arcs meeting at Jupiter, bending around the correct side, with live flyby telemetry (approach speed, required bend, periapsis radius). • Better launch windows: the planner tells you when no real slingshot exists and scans 14 years ahead for the next one. • Planet positions now use JPL ephemerides, matching the real sky across centuries. Also in this update • Andromeda now sits the right way up. • Smoother, faster performance and a quicker first load of the Earth view. • Fixes for an iPhone crash and the telescope view in landscape. Clear skies!

A full observatory in Telescope Mode • 8 eyepieces, from a 3.2mm planetary to an ultra-wide 38mm — each labeled with its true apparent field of view (AFOV) • Realistic optics: higher magnification darkens the field of view, just like the exit pupil of a real telescope • Atmospheric seeing: the image shimmers and sharpens in moments of steady air — adjustable from perfect to poor All 55 Messier star clusters in your sky • 29 globular and 26 open clusters, each rendered as thousands of individual stars that resolve as you zoom in • The Crab Nebula (M1), Orion Nebula (M42) and Ring Nebula (M57) join Andromeda as fully placed deep-sky objects • New Messier target list — jump to any object and it is marked in the sky • Objects brighten realistically by magnitude: bright showpieces appear first, faint ones need more zoom Also in this update • Accurate Moon position for your location, based on a full lunar theory • Meteors and aircraft now stay true to the landscape at any time-lapse speed • New toggle for sky hover markers, refined star glow, smoother Milky Way zoom • Many stability and performance improvements

Look up: Earth - the Relativistic Skydome is here Stand on Earth and look up at the real night sky for your location and the current moment. A true horizon with a gold compass, star positions from real astronomy with names and brightness, the Sun at its true altitude, the Milky Way overhead, and gentle night-time crickets. Tap any star to mark it as a destination and read its relativistic Onboard (OTT) and Earth (ETT) travel times. Opens in real time, in Constant-g mode. - Constellations in 3 different modes - Use your real GPS location (optional) - Calculate relativistic travel time to each target in your night sky Look through a telescope. - From the night sky on Earth, step up to the telescope beside you and look through the eyepiece. Start wide in the finderscope, then switch between four eyepieces to zoom in on whatever you've centred. Real atmospheric seeing. - A Seeing slider recreates the shimmer of the real sky — the image softens and drifts, and sharp, steady moments arrive at irregular intervals, just like waiting for the air to settle. Turn it up and it never fully sharpens. A sea of stars. - The eyepiece reveals far more faint catalogue stars than the naked eye, brightening as you raise the magnification — the rich field you actually see through a scope. True-to-life optics. - The eyepiece shows the left-right mirrored image of a refractor with a star diagonal, while the finder stays upright and true. A live Altitude / Azimuth readout for the centred star or deep-sky object lets you dial it in on an Alt-Az or Dobsonian mount. Deep-sky objects coming - The full Messier catalogue will shortly be implemented, starting with the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) rendered in place Also in this update: - Interstellar: a new Classic-view toggle, plus a chase camera that flies along with your ship. - Play/Pause and Stop now appear while a journey is running, in every scene. - Solar System: Titan limb haze and Venus cloud super-rotation; the Moon now lines up correctly under the day/night line. - Added a privacy manifest — NearLight collects no data and does no tracking.

Huge visual update! - The Interstellar star field now glows: every star carries a soft halo, and the brightest, most luminous stars sparkle with diffraction spikes. - The Sun blazes in the Solar System with a warm glow that grows as you pull the camera back - New 3-stage Labels button (Solar System & Interstellar) - Richer planets: real moon meshes, sharper 8K textures, Uranus's rings, a Saturn ring shadow, and 8K surface maps for Uranus, Neptune and Venus. - Deimos and Phobos now absolutely real - Earth, Mars and Venus gain a thin atmospheric glow along their sunlit edge. - Interstellar adds optional orientation lines to the reference plane. - Full keyboard control and VoiceOver support on Mac, a Milky Way target reticle, consistent +/− keys on every slider, and info popovers that explain the whole control bar. - Lighter, clearer travel visuals: smoother route ribbons, a smaller ship and a closer follow-cam. Fixes - Solar System two-finger zoom now keeps your target centred. - Fixed a crash when changing travel speed mid-flight in Interstellar.

NearLight is now fully keyboard-controllable on Mac, with clearer in-app help and a new way to read the sky. - Full keyboard control (Mac): Fly the 3D scenes with W/A/S/D, zoom with Page Up/Down, and use shortcuts for Reset, Labels, Orbits, Audio and Play/Pause. Fine-tune any slider with + / −. - Milky Way: pick a target by keyboard. A blue 3D reticle glides over the galactic plane; steer with the arrow keys, press Return to select. - Black Hole Sim: smooth keyboard camera. Orbit, raise/lower, tilt and change observer distance, all with gentle easing. - Interstellar: orientation lines. Nearby stars drop a thin line to Sol's reference plane with a marker where it lands, so you can read each star's height at a glance. - VoiceOver support. The 3D scenes are now described aloud (selected target + travel status), and info popovers stay in focus. - Clearer help. Every "i" now explains its whole control bar, with a plain-language note for each slider. - Plus softer bloom, clearer travel routes, and many small fixes.

- LIVE Mission Data window (Solar System) — while a mission flies, a compact panel shows speedometer gauges for the destination's and the ship's speed (matching turns the ship gauge green), distance, a live ETA countdown, a Δv‑to‑match readout and a propellant gauge — with the flight controls built in. The iPhone Travel Simulation panel now matches. - More correct arrivals — in Constant‑g the ship brakes to the destination's orbital speed and a classical transfer speeds up to match an outer planet on approach — so the gauges read "matched" on arrival, and the ship only flips to brake when it's actually arriving too fast. - Interstellar — gentler, easier‑to‑aim rotation, and a running trip now ends only via Stop - iPhone & fixes — Solar System and Interstellar panels collapse to a tidy pill; rotating the device no longer interrupts a running mission; fixed an iPad crash opening the Solar System tab.

• Fresh new look: a unified gold-and-blue design across all four views. Floating panels now read as clean glass windows that lift off the starfield, with a calmer, more data-forward layout. • Cleaner data panels: each view's data drawer is now split into separate windows (Destination · Travel Mode · Travel Data), matching the Black Hole Sim layout. • Smoother performance: eliminated frame-rate drops when panels are open, and tab switching on iPhone is now instant. • Refined iPhone layout: top and bottom controls, sheets, and landscape panels polished for a consistent feel. • Solar System labels: labels and route markers are now hidden behind planets and moons as you orbit, and turning Labels off hides every marker. • Stability & crash fixes: resolved a crash some users hit in the Milky Way view, plus several reliability improvements.

- Renamed the two relativistic travel modes to Constant c and Constant g (clearer than the old names) across Solar System, Interstellar and Milky Way. - Milky Way live trip clock: during a flight you now see onboard time elapsed (Time passed) and the advancing Earth Date — with physically correct relativistic time dilation. - Milky Way Current Speed now shows the true (near–light-speed) velocity, so speed and time dilation finally agree. - Milky Way flights now pause on arrival (instead of stopping), so the final readouts stay on screen until you press Stop. - Solar System, Interstellar and Milky Way trips now start at a calm 0.2× pace; speed up any time with the tortoise/hare slider. - Interstellar now opens in the follow camera on launch (free look returns when you stop). - Solar System engine flame is now a warm chemical-rocket flame (was blue). - Fixed the classical launch date drifting while a mission was flying. - Layout polish: fixed-width telemetry values and consistent row spacing so the panels no longer jitter.

NearLight 1.5.0 Classical Spaceflight — a whole new way to travel A third travel mode in the Solar System, next to Acceleration ∞ and Acceleration in g. Instead of sci-fi star-drives, fly real present-day missions with honest orbital mechanics: • Pick a launch date and a Fast or Efficient transfer — NearLight solves the actual transfer orbit from Earth's live position to the planet's, sized to real chemical-rocket limits. • Watch the ship leave a 300 km parking orbit with a departure burn, coast the transfer arc in real time, then flip around and fire a capture burn into orbit at the destination. • The 3-D transfer arc is annotated with departure, coast, flyby and capture-burn markers, and live telemetry shows distance to target, distance travelled, heliocentric speed, transfer duration, ETA and arrival date — plus a propellant gauge sized by the staged rocket equation. • Gravity assists: where a planetary slingshot is the real-world route (Mercury via Venus; Saturn, Uranus and Neptune via Jupiter), choose Direct or a flyby route. NearLight flies the two-leg trajectory, wraps the ship smoothly around the assist planet, and compares both routes' travel time and fuel — validated against Voyager 2's Jupiter-to-Neptune sling. • Launch windows: when the planets aren't aligned for your date, NearLight suggests the next real launch window and its fuel cost, one tap away. Targets Mercury through Neptune. (Pluto honestly reports it's beyond chemical rockets.) A dedicated Solar System spacecraft The Solar System tab now flies a new, detailed exploration craft with its own real life engine and chemical propellant. Also improved • Every Solar System journey opens in the follow camera and starts at a calm 0.2× pace — speed up any time with the tortoise/hare slider (now down to 0.01× for slow motion). • Calmer scene: a dimmer starfield and brighter orbit trails that fade around each loop, so a planet's direction of travel reads at a glance. • The Milky Way shows a "Building Milky Way…" notice the first time you open it, since building a half million Star Galaxy needs a bit of time • The black hole disc now can be shifted to blue, as of latest studies Fixed • Rotating an iPhone with the Milky Way open no longer freezes for several seconds — the galaxy stays put and re-lays out instantly. • Free look is restored the moment you stop a Solar System journey.

The biggest update since launch — NearLight has a completely new interface! • New "Mission Dock": all controls now live in one compact bar at the bottom — time, mission and view clearly separated. The 3D scene is finally all yours. • Data on demand: destination, travel and physics data slide in as a side drawer when you need them — and get out of the way when you don't. • Cinema mode: one tap on the eye hides the entire interface. • Collect every world: each unvisited destination carries a blue dot — completing a journey clears it for good. Can you clear them all? • The real night sky: the star map now shows NASA's Milky Way panorama, astronomically aligned — every star sits in front of its actual patch of sky. • Milky Way: a more organic look with dust filaments and glow — and seen edge-on it darkens realistically like a real galaxy. • Black holes: every pick from the catalog gets a fresh cinematic framing — viewing angle, tilt and proximity vary like movie shots. • Finer time control in the Solar System: 15 steps from real-time up to 1 year/second, plus a quick calendar picker. • Instant tab switching: scenes and camera positions are preserved. • Plus: fixed audio dropouts, iPad stability improvements and lower energy use.

The Milky Way got a major makeover. • Photo-matched galaxy — the galaxy view was rebuilt to resemble a real face-on spiral: hundreds of thousands of stars tracing the arms, bright blue-white clusters, glowing pink star-forming regions, and a warm golden core. • Dust lanes — dark, gently curved dust lanes now weave through the spiral arms, giving the disc real depth as you orbit and fly through it. • Softer glow, calmer motion — a gentle interstellar glow fills the disc and fades as you dive inside, and the galaxy now spins more slowly and smoothly. Also improved: the Milky Way tab opens instantly again, no more brief flash when picking a destination, and the spaceship now correctly disappears when you stop a travel simulation.

This update polishes the Black Hole Sim • Doppler Beaming: a new slider tilts the disc's brightness and colour to one side — the part rotating towards you turns brighter and blue-white, the part rotating away dims and reddens. • A bright photon ring now hugs the event horizon, correctly hidden behind the accretion disc. • Get much closer: the camera can now descend almost all the way down to the horizon. • Richer, deeper-red disc colours and more organic, swirling smoke. • Sharper and faster: anti-aliasing plus adaptive resolution keep the black hole crisp on every device at a smooth 60 fps. • Fixed faint radial "spokes" across the disc and the jagged outer-rim edge.

Native black-hole renderer The Black Hole Sim is now drawn entirely by our own Metal engine — Schwarzschild ray-tracing with a Kerr-flavoured accretion disc, relativistic Doppler beaming, HDR bloom and filmic tonemapping. The black hole now renders reliably on every supported iPhone, iPad and Mac. Discs are brighter, you can pinch to change Observer Distance and right-drag to tilt the disc, and on Mac you can pop the two time-dilation clocks out into their own floating window. Background music Three looping space-ambience tracks with rewind / mute / skip controls — a small audio panel on Mac and iPad, and a fold-out audio window on iPhone. One loop is exclusive to the Black Hole Sim; playback is always user-initiated. Chase cameras everywhere - A new Follow camera flies alongside your ship in the Solar System, Interstellar and Milky Way tabs — orbit and zoom around the ship while it travels. - Solar System Reset View button to re-frame your destination. Solar System upgrades - Pluto added with its real tilted, eccentric, retrograde orbit. - Realistic axial tilt for every planet and moon (Earth 23.4°, Saturn's rings locked to its equator, Uranus on its side, retrograde Venus/Uranus/Pluto/Triton). - Reworked orbit insertion — arriving at a planet or moon is now one continuous fly-by capture: the ship matches the body's orbital velocity, swings around it and settles into a geostationary orbit in the body's own spin direction, instead of braking to a dead stop and circling in a separate pass. - Trips now launch from a parking orbit just outside Earth (no more flying out through the planet). Fixes & polish - Fixed the dark-mode interface being unreadable on iOS 18 (the app now forces its intended dark appearance everywhere). - Smoother, more accurate Black Hole Sim: the camera now sits exactly where the Observer Distance readout says (at the event horizon means visually at the horizon), the Earth clock no longer races or rewinds while you drag the slider, and the camera roll eases out naturally. - Solar System: clean cruise routes to moons (no more zigzag near Jupiter), the route line no longer draws through planets, a correct turn-around-then-brake in g-mode, and a steady "Energy needed" readout. - Milky Way: fixed a black flash over the galactic core, thinner route markers up close so they stop swallowing the ship, and a reliable Reset View. - Interstellar: ship keeps its arrival orientation, the initial drag orbits Sol correctly, and overlapping labels on close binaries stay legible. - Various iPhone layout fixes (audio / About controls, landscape icons).

Milky Way — an all-new tab - Explore a procedurally generated spiral galaxy at realistic scale (~100,000 light-years, ~300,000 stars). Left-drag to rotate, right-drag to fly, scroll/pinch to zoom, double-click to recentre — and rotation now orbits whatever you're looking at. - Click anywhere to plot a route from Sol to the nearest star and read its relativistic travel times, with full Destination Data (heliocentric & galactocentric distance, galactic region, direction from Sol). Travel simulation & onboard cameras - Real Play / Pause / Stop with a tortoise–hare speed slider; watch the ship accelerate, coast and brake, with "Coast" and "De-Accel" phase markers. - Three cameras — a free view, a side chase cam, and a first-person onboard view. - A relativistic onboard view near light speed: star aberration (the forward "headlight" cone), Doppler colour shift, relativistic beaming and velocity-driven shake. Toggle "Real β" to compare true physical vs. perceived speed. Richer travel data - Travel Times now add Earth distance, length-contracted distance, the Lorentz factor, peak speed (fraction of c) and the estimated energy needed — cycle the unit between Joule, TWh, PWh and "Sun-output time". - A much bigger sky - The catalogue grew from 2,456 to 8,151 real stars, out to 1,000 light-years (was ~100 ly), with matching exoplanet host data. Sorted nearest-first, with proper names preferred (e.g. "Alpha Centauri"). Polish Clearer overlapping star markers, independently scrolling side panels, distance-based brightness so the field never blows out, and lower idle power use so the app stays cool when nothing is moving.

A big update that takes you from our solar system to the stars. New • New Solar System tab — explore the Sun, planets and moons in 3D. • Solar System Travel Simulation — send a ship to any Planet or moon and watch the journey unfold. • Implemented Coast Phase — accelerate, glide, then brake along your route. • Cinematic camera that sweeps smoothly to your chosen destination. • Distance rings reveal how far the nearby stars really are. • A stunning 8K Milky Way now fills the night sky. • Live travel data — distance, travel time, speed and energy use. • Play, Pause and Stop and Slow Motion controls for every simulated trip. • Refined design and improved layouts. Fixes • Smoother performance when rotating the map with labels on. • The Sun and route line no longer get clipped when zooming in close. • Various stability and layout fixes.

Added - Travel-flight animation in Acceleration ∞ and Acceleration in g tabs (Earth orbit telemetry, twin-paradox Δ, play/stop, log-speed slider) - Realistic acceleration profile with engine flame that flips at the de-accel switch point - Orbital time dilation in Black Hole Sim alongside ZAMO Fixed - Near-extremal Kerr float-precision bug - 30 Hz @Published re-render storm during travel animation - Reentrant NSHostingView layout warnings - Black Hole observer-distance mapping logarithmic - updateHighlight frame-pass problem - Ghost de-accel markers on slider drag