Night Sky Pro delivers a seriously in-depth stargazing experience

Night Sky Pro

I live in a metropolitan area where I’m lucky if I can look up at night and see the stars. It’s just too bright and the air is too congested. Stargazing apps have made it possible for me to actually see deep into the night sky without having to head for the hills.

iCandi Apps, the makers of The Night Sky and The Night Sky 2 have just launched their third in the stargazing series. Night Sky Pro is thick with lots of new features on top of the plethora of features already available on the previous two apps.

With Night Sky Pro, you’ll see a redesigned Sky View with richer colors and animations. Switch views to see the sky’s radio waves, microwaves, infrared, gamma rays, x-rays, visible light, and ultraviolet light using the Light Spectrum Array.

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Stars, satellites, and planets are more detailed, and the new Deep Space Objects section includes a comprehensive database with tons of information on, you guessed it, deep space objects.

A six-month subscription to Night Sky Community, which is a paid add-on in previous versions, comes free with this app. You can chat with fellow stargazers, tell others about your favorite locations, and find out about cools spots from others.

Sky Time Machine lets you go backward or forward in time to see what the sky looked like on a specific given date in history or will look like in the future. You can’t watch the end of the universe, though.

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Even when looking through the strongest of telescopes, you’ll only get one view at a time of nearby planets. This app gives you 3D views of all planets in the entire solar system, plus the moon and the no-longer-a-full-planet of Pluto. You can even see a visual representation of satellites that surround us.

Even though Fievel Mousekewitz taught us that we can wish on the same star as someone far, far away, the night sky looks completely different in different parts of the world. The World Traveler features lets you virtually travel to a different country to see what the sky looks like from their vantage point. You can even use World Traveler in conjunction with Sky Time Machine to see what it looked like in another country 30 years ago.

If you happen to be a satellite chaser, this app will show you a trajectory of them all. Track their path in the night sky and see if you can spot one when it comes into your view.

Thanks to iOS 8, the app includes widgets and notifications that you can add to your Lock screen. Check out weather conditions and view a stargazing graph to plan ahead for a night of stargazing.

Sky Night Pro is available on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for $2.99. Download it in the App Store today.

What do you think of this feature-rich stargazing app? Let us know in the comments section.