The best stargazing apps for Apple's iPhone

Even the best stargazing apps—perfect for the new iPhone 14—are a form of cheating. They stop you from learning what's in the night sky and instead keep your eyes firmly glued to your smartphone’s screen, thereby killing your night vision.

No one really believes that. I've been in the company of all kinds of astronomers, from amateurs with decades of observing experience to professional astronomers at some of the worlds best observatories. They all use stargazing apps. Some of them even leave their smartphone screen’s brightness turned all the way up.

Luckily, all of the best stargazing apps have special red light modes that save your night vision—but much, much more:

As well as 2.5 million stars and 32,000 deep-sky objects, this app has a useful “Sky Tonight” tab that offers notifications of celestial events, stargazing session planning and the ability to share observations. Upgrades are possible to allow control of WiFi-enabled telescopes.

Upgrades allow FaceTime Audio calls between Apple users while in the app for interactive shared stargazing sessions while “Sky Tags” lets you share celestial objects for future stargazing sessions and via iMessage.

This app is great for a real-world view of the night sky from your own backyard. As well as an augmented reality overlay of the night sky map on your surroundings using the iPhone’s camera Sky Tonight’s “interactive trajectory” tells you the exact path through the night sky of any specific object.

This free and open source planetarium software is one of the most comprehensive with new versions looking ever more polished. Users can focus on deep-sky objects and, most usefully, simulate the effects of Earth’s atmosphere to show a more realistic-looking night sky.

Desperate to see the aurora but don’t live in the far north? This beautiful-looking app puts fake aurora into the night sky as well as 24 famous constellations, 100 deep-sky objects and movements of the International Space Station. It’s also got a great news and explainer section that will help you become a more skilful stargazer.

If you’re prepared to travel to dark skies to get the most our of stargazing then consider the Light Pollution Map, which will show you the dark spots between light-polluted area. Figure on going at least 40 miles from a major city. It’s great for meteor showers, but only if they’re happening away from a full Moon.

Its name has nothing to do with what it is—a hyperlocal weather forecasting app—but since a clear sky is as important as a dark sky it’s an important part of a stargazer’s toolkit.

Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.