Night Atlas

A planetarium for adults

See tonight’s sky from your town

Night Atlas opens on the real sky for a town you save. Name what is up, learn the constellations in Star Camp, and take the same figures outside.

Download for Windows See what it does

Tonight, from the place you save

Night Atlas showing the Big Dipper, with Alkaid, Alioth, and Dubhe, plus Arcturus, Kochab, and Polaris, over an oak and a pine at the Great Lakes shore.
The Big Dipper, Arcturus, and Polaris over oak and pine on the Great Lakes shore. Drag the sky. The wheel zooms in. Click a star for the facts.

You search for a town, a state, or a country. Night Atlas does not ask for your location. It starts from the place you saved, after dusk, with the stars that are actually up. Lines and names can be on or quiet.

What is up, by how high it sits

By height list in Night Atlas for the Great Lakes shore, from 15 to 70 degrees up, with Kochab, Polaris, galaxies, and the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula.
A height band for one place and one night. Each row names the object and the kind it is.

Choose how many degrees above the horizon you want, such as 15° to 70°. The list is for the place and the time on the clock. Tap a row to turn the glass there. A small picture on the row shows the kind: star, galaxy, cluster, nebula.

Learn the constellations in Star Camp

Star Camp in Night Atlas at a home in Newton, Kansas, with constellation cards, Mazalot cards, and a meteor streak near the Big Dipper.
Star Camp at a saved home in Newton, Kansas. A meteor crosses the Big Dipper while the hunt list stays open.

Star Camp uses the same sky and asks you to find what that night can really show. Constellation cards and Mazalot cards sit beside the glass. Roll a random outing, or open a season you want to practice: your January, your July, the equator in March, Patagonia in June, the Red Centre in January.

A desk that keeps your night vision

Night Atlas in night vision, with red menus, a red clock, and red star names over the Big Dipper, an oak, and a pine.
Night vision turns the desk and the names dark red, so the screen does not wipe out the eyes you need outside.

Turn night vision on before you step out. Menus, the clock, and the labels go dark red. Turn it off and the desk is cream and gold, for a lit room.

The sun on its real path, by day

A pale sun disc in a daytime sky in Night Atlas, above two oak trees and a distant city skyline.
Mid-afternoon. The sun is a disc on the path it really takes from this place.

In daylight the sun is a disc in the sky. Speed the clock up and you can watch it rise, cross, and set. At night the same clock holds the planets and the Moon.

The ground changes with the place

The horizon stays low, so trees and hills do not eat the sky. A North American town gets oaks and pines. Other places get the ground that belongs there, and the stars that belong at that latitude.

Oak and pine trees along the horizon of a Great Lakes lookout in Night Atlas, under the Big Dipper.
Home latitudes in North America. Oaks and a pine on the Great Lakes shore.
Palm trees with coconuts along a Hawaiian horizon in Night Atlas, with Arcturus and the Big Dipper in the sky.
Hawaii. Palms in the foreground, Arcturus in the west.
Palms and a large rainforest tree on a Costa Rica horizon in Night Atlas, with Scorpius and Antares above.
Costa Rica. Palms, a broad rainforest crown, and Scorpius.
Sand dunes and flat-topped acacia trees on a Sahara horizon in Night Atlas, with Polaris and the Big Dipper above.
The Sahara. Dunes, acacia, and the northern stars still in view.
Pale gum trees on an Australian horizon in Night Atlas, with the Southern Cross stars Acrux, Mimosa, and Gacrux.
Eastern Australia. Pale gum trunks and the Southern Cross.

The Moon, the planets, and your photographs

A crescent Moon in Night Atlas near the Pleiades and Aldebaran, with Saturn high in the sky and Mars low on the horizon, over oak and pine trees.
A crescent Moon near the Pleiades. Saturn is high, Mars is by the horizon, and Orion is coming up over the trees.

The Moon and the planets ride the round clock. Click the Moon and a photograph opens for some phases. Other phases open a NASA picture of the disc. NASA did not endorse this app. The Your photographs button adds a still of your own to a deep-sky object or a named star. Those files stay on your computer.

Events can also jump you to a planet worth seeing. The list below opens on Saturn at opposition.

Meteors, eclipses, and the night’s events

The Events list in Night Atlas for Newton, Kansas, showing Saturn at opposition on 9 October 2026 and passes of Tiangong and the ISS.
Events for a saved home. This night leads with Saturn at opposition, then passes of Tiangong and the ISS.

The same list holds eclipses, close planet pairings, oppositions, meteor peaks, and station passes from the place you saved. Tap a row to open that night. A meteor can also cross the glass on its own, the way the bright streak does in the Star Camp picture. A backyard and a bright Moon thin the faint ones, the way they do outside.

Questions

Download for Windows

Night Atlas for Windows is free. This is an early desktop version. The download is about 380 MB. Zooming the sky uses the pictures in that file.

Download for Windows

Windows SmartScreen may warn you the first time, because the app is not code-signed yet. If it does, choose More info, then Run anyway.

The larger photographs are a separate download, about 50 MB. The glass looks the same without them. Unzip the pack so a folder named photographs sits next to Night Atlas. A click on a Stellina object, the Moon, or a planet then opens the larger picture.

Download the photograph pack

Made by Partridge Enterprises LLC. The sky math and the catalogs are credited inside the app. Credits

One note when there is news

Leave an email if you want a single message when a later build is ready. No account. No other mail.

The list is kept by Buttondown. You can leave it whenever the mail says how.

Privacy

This page asks for an email address only if you want news of a later build. That address is stored by Buttondown so the note can be sent. Night Atlas does not sell it, and does not add it to anything else.

The Windows app runs on your computer. Your town, your settings, your sky log, and any photographs you add stay in the app’s own files on that machine. The page does not receive them.

Questions about this page or the app: partridgeenterprises.llc@gmail.com.