New Free Android App

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Just found this and it looks to be brilliant. Reviews are all 5 star.
On Play Store look for Night Sky Tools, free.
I've only just downloaded it but it's full of info, logging tools, equipment inventory, calculators and more.

Gotta go now, new toy to explore.

[hickny (Peter)]

I downloaded and looked at this and am very impressed. Always had trouble with Google Sky but this thing works. Its filled with a lot of information and can be slow at times but since its FREE and no adds it should suit a lot of people.

My program of choice though is SkySafari.

Originally Posted by ZeroID

Just found this and it looks to be brilliant. Reviews are all 5 star.
On Play Store look for Night Sky Tools, free.
I've only just downloaded it but it's full of info, logging tools, equipment inventory, calculators and more.

Gotta go now, new toy to explore.

[1kmodem (Will)]

Great app, cheers for the post

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Seems to have a few bugs I've found.
My evening seems to start at 0600 am and finish at 1900 and it totals 35 hrs of night.
Also the location settings has no Nth\Sth East\West for Lat and Long ( which may have something to do with the night length\time problem )
And it doesn't seem to communicate with the GPS which is also related I'd say. Neither does the weather for your locality come up correctly but that may have to do with the availability of local data..
I'll see if I can give some feedback to the developer.

[pgc hunter]

I tried Nightsky tools, really good app, but the sky map is very laggy making it extremely frustrating to use. I found this annoying enough to prompt me to purchase Mobile Observatory which is excellent and the sky maps are beautiful.

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Yes, I have Mobile Observatory as well as a few other Astro apps. This was just another option and I do like the observing log and equipment list capabilities.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Originally Posted by ZeroID

Seems to have a few bugs I've found.

Have you got it set to automatically "Use current location" (Tap on the "spanner" icon in the top right corner) - this should allow you to set the correct location and time zone automatically.

I find Night Sky Tools to be a handy app, but Sky Safari Plus is far and away my number one astronomy app, for finding targets, getting information about them, recording observations, and controlling my GoTo telescope mount. (The basic version of Sky Safari is free, but has a smaller database than Plus / Pro, and can't control a GoTo telescope. The Plus version is quite cheap, and is great value for all but the most demanding semi-professional observers.)

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Originally Posted by julianh72

Have you got it set to automatically "Use current location" (Tap on the "spanner" icon in the top right corner) - this should allow you to set the correct location and time zone automatically.

Yep, and Time Zone NZ plus lat and long set. Still no luck.

[Regulus (Trevor)]

I have this and it's a great little app but my preference for a tool is Skyeye. I can blue tack it to the tube and use it to find objects. If you're searching for something it directs u with arrows to steer the scope by. Very useful and free.
Google has usually been unable to work out where on earth it is ans so is inaccurate. After Skyeye, Stellarium is my next favourite.
Trevor
Trevor