LOADING THE MOON SURFACE…

SPECIAL SETTINGS

Saved on this device. Everything still works offline.

Zoom speed 1.0×
Auto-rotate when a world opens
Reduce motion (no idle spin or glide)
Label budget (max shown)
High-resolution detail layer
High-quality rendering (sharper, slower)
Keep screen awake
Show frame rate
Live space-weather updates (only when online)
Ambient music
Music volume
Deep star catalogue (108,000 stars)
Label backdrop (easier to read)
Restore defaults

CHART A

SAVED CHARTS

NOTES


NOTES ·

Written notes for the active chart, saved on this device. Dictate with 🎙 and share when done.

☾ THE MOON

NEXT PHASES

RISE · TRANSIT · SET

PHASE THIS MONTH

☀ SOLAR FLARE PROJECTION

SELECTED REGION

READING THE DISK

ACTIVE REGIONS · EARTH-IMPACT ANGLE

SUN · EARTH PROJECTION

RECENT FLARES (GOES X-RAY)

GEOMAGNETIC · SOLAR WIND

BUILD PROGRESS0%

COMPASS

ABOVE THE HORIZON

JUPITER'S MOONS

SATURN'S RINGS

TELESCOPE

OBJECTS

NEAREST STARS

PLANETARY EXPLORER

A zoomable, labeled 3D map of the Solar System. An app by Cherishvale.

Imagery

Surface imagery for the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Pluto, Charon, Phobos, Deimos, Bennu, Ceres, Vesta, Europa, Ganymede, Enceladus and Titan is NASA / USGS public-domain data.

Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Saturn's rings are original procedurally-generated artwork © Cherishvale.

IAU feature names and coordinates: USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature (public domain).

Software

Three.js and OrbitControls © three.js authors, MIT License. Packaged with Capacitor (MIT).

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: the above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.

Solar-system view (☉ System)

A navigable map of the whole system: orbit the Sun a full 360°, above or below the planets. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom. Zooming out past any globe fades into this view; tapping a planet flies back into its globe. ◉ Level restores a north-up overview if you get lost.

Date engine: planet positions come from JPL approximate Keplerian elements (valid 1800–2050) for any date you pick — try Oct 1 1982. Play/pause and time speed animate the system. Famous dates are in the Jump-to menu, with visiting comets 1P/Halley, Hale-Bopp, NEOWISE and interstellar visitors 1I/ʻOumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS on their real trajectories.

Scale: real scale is unusable on a screen (Neptune orbits 77× farther out than Mercury), so distances default to a compressed mapping, 8·AU⁰·⁵⁵, with orbit rings drawn through it. ⤢ True scale shows real relative distances (8 units per AU). Planet discs are enlarged to stay tappable and are illustrative — directions are exact. Moon distances are exaggerated the same way. The Sun is a stylized disc, not to scale.

Sky tracker (🧭 in the system bar): a compass panorama of the sky above your chosen place and time — the horizon with cardinal points and an altitude grid, 115 bright stars (RA/Dec from Wikidata, CC0; magnitudes from Wikipedia) labelled by name, and the Sun, Moon and planets plotted where they actually are, with a list of everything above the horizon and its compass bearing.

Deep sky: a 5,044-star chart with all 88 constellations — stick figures and IAU boundaries (d3-celestial, BSD-3; Hipparcos positions) — plus 1,900 deep-sky objects (OpenNGC, CC BY-SA): every Messier and Caldwell and bright NGC/IC clusters, nebulae and galaxies. Filter the list and pick one for a Tonight plan: rise, transit, set, maximum altitude and a 24-hour altitude curve. Star any object to build your own Favourites list, or browse the built-in Messier, Caldwell and binocular-best lists. The same panel shows Jupiter's moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto positioned from their real orbital periods, with transits, occultations and shadow transits marked) and Saturn's rings with their true opening angle and Titan. Night mode (🔴) dims the whole interface to red.

Telescope (🧭 Sky tracker → Telescope): connect to an ASCOM Alpaca mount on your own network by entering its address (host:port), then GoTo the selected object or Sync on it, with abort and park. The app talks only to the mount you enter; nothing is sent anywhere else, and no internet is required. INDI users can run an Alpaca bridge (e.g. indi-alpaca-bridge) and connect to that address the same way.

AR (📷 in the system bar): point your camera at the sky and the chart is drawn over it — stars, constellations, the planets and the Messier/Caldwell objects, aligned with the device's orientation. It needs camera and motion access; without a compass or gyro the view falls back to drag-to-look, and without a camera the overlay still works as a finder. The field of view is approximate.

Zodiac systems: the chart can be drawn in the tropical zodiac (equinox of date), in the sidereal zodiac with a choice of ayanamsa — Lahiri, Fagan–Bradley, Krishnamurti, B. V. Raman or De Luce — or as the 27 Vedic nakshatras, and it reports the Chinese year animal and current solar term. The wheel and all positions follow the chosen system.

Almanac (🗓 in the system bar): a month calendar for your location with sunrise, sunset, civil twilight, moonrise, moonset, day length and the moon's phase for every day, the season dates (equinoxes and solstices) and the traditional name of the month's full moon. Below the calendar is a Sky events list for the month: solar and lunar eclipses, planet oppositions, solar conjunctions and greatest elongations, close planet conjunctions and the meteor showers peaking that month. All computed from the same offline ephemeris (eclipse dates are approximate).

Codex (📜 in the bar): every world opens as a historical codex page — a parchment that unfurls around the planet while it turns slowly on its dais, the ancient symbol as a watermark, and sections on naming, history, key facts and the name in other languages. Tap ☰ All bodies to browse and search all 239 catalogued bodies (the Sun, planets, dwarf planets, 191 named moons, and notable comets and asteroids). Worlds we model open as 3D globes; the rest show a representative sphere.

Synastry: tick Synastry — two charts in astrology mode and enter a second person's name and birth data. Both charts share one bi-wheel — the inner ring is chart A, the outer ring chart B — with the cross-aspects drawn between them, plus a full inter-aspect list and a synastry grid.

Moon mode (☾ in the system bar): the Moon rendered with its real surface and true phase for any date — with illumination, phase angle, moon age, zodiac position, distance, angular size, the next four phases, rise/transit/set times for your location, and a day-by-day phase strip for the month. The Moon's globe panel also shows its current phase.

Astrology mode (✦ in the system bar): a full chart engine — enter a birth date, time, UTC offset and place, and get the Ascendant, Midheaven, twelve house cusps in Placidus, whole-sign, equal or Porphyry, every planet and luminary with sign, degree and retrograde state, a full aspect list, an aspect grid, a house table, and the current moon phase. All positions come from the same offline ephemeris as the orbit map, and the chart maths is validated against geometric reference cases.

Zoom: zooming is proportional to altitude, so the surface slides under your finger at a natural rate as you descend from the whole planet to a single city — no sudden jumps. Drag the slider on the right edge (or scroll / pinch) to fly in and out; the labels reveal themselves continent → country → state → city as you approach.

High-resolution detail: Earth ships a grid of 30°×30° imagery tiles at ~1.6 km/pixel (source-limited), blended over the global texture as you zoom in — about six times sharper than the base map, while only one tile is held in graphics memory at a time. Deeper than that needs higher-resolution regional imagery.

Street maps: seven metro areas ship as flat, pannable street-level maps at ~1.2 m/pixel (NAIP aerial imagery, public domain) — fine enough to make out individual streets and buildings. Open them from ☰ Bodies → Street maps, or via the 🏙 Street map button that appears when the globe is over a covered city. Imagery is US-only because only the US releases aerial photography into the public domain.

Earth atlas: the Earth globe carries ~240,000 labels — every populated place over 500 people (GeoNames), all countries and ~4,600 states/provinces (Natural Earth), plus physical features. Labels are revealed in tiers as you zoom (continent → country → state → city → town) and declare themselves on a grid so detail appears exactly when it is relevant. Use the label filter to show only cities, only countries/regions, or only physical features (peaks, seas, lakes, rivers, deserts and ranges).

Earth data

Populated places: GeoNames (CC BY 4.0). Countries and states/provinces: Natural Earth (public domain).

Accuracy (spot-checked vs JPL Horizons): planets ±0.25°, Pluto ±1°, Moon ±1°, Ceres/Vesta/Bennu ±0.1° (bundled 10-day sampled ephemeris, 1980–2035; hidden outside that range), comets best near their labeled perihelion dates. Small moons use circular orbits and are schematic.

VR (beta): on a headset browser with WebXR (Quest 2/3/3S) a 🥽 VR button appears in the system bar for look-around viewing. Controllers are not mapped yet.

Paths: orbit lines can be drawn as Soft (a glowing, aesthetic blur), Science (crisp computed lines) or Off.

Comfort: there is no flashing or strobing anywhere in the app — planet colours are static and time-lapse is smooth orbital motion, not flicker. The idle auto-spin is disabled automatically when your device requests reduced motion.

Space weather (☀ Flares)

The Flares view ships a snapshot of NOAA SWPC public-domain space-weather data — active regions, GOES X-ray flares, planetary Kp, the real-time solar wind, and monthly sunspot/F10.7 indices. The projection geometry is our own: region longitudes are rotated to the date you choose and measured against the Sun–Earth line. Optionally you can turn on live updates to fetch fresher data from NOAA when online; the app sends nothing about you and works fully offline without it.

Licences & attribution

This app bundles open data and imagery. Datasets that are not public domain remain under their own licences; the app itself is proprietary and those files are not re-licensed.

Full notices and build scripts: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md in the source release. NASA/ESA imagery is generally not subject to copyright in the United States; attribution is provided as a courtesy.

Disclaimer

Not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by NASA, USGS, or any space agency. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Website: cherishvale.com

MODES & GUIDES

Tap any mode to jump straight to it. Each card is a one-line how-to.

Teacher mode

SETUP & HELP

🗂 Switching modes

The 🗂 Modes button in the system bar opens a grid of every view with a one-line how-to — tap a card to jump straight there. It is the fastest way to move between the atlas, the sky chart, astrology, flares, the almanac, AR and the rest.

🌌 Sky tracker

  1. Filter the Objects list or pick a preset (Above horizon / My lists / Messier / Caldwell / binocular best).
  2. Tap any row for a Tonight plan — altitude now, transit, rise/set and a 24-hour altitude curve.
  3. Star an object to add it to your lists; export the list with ⤓.
  4. Below are Jupiter's moons (with transits and shadows) and Saturn's rings.

✦ Astrology

  1. Enter a date, time, UTC offset and place to get the Ascendant, MC and twelve house cusps.
  2. Read positions, aspects, the aspect grid, then the Balance (element/modality), hemispheres, chart shape and essential dignities.
  3. Tick Synastry for a second person, Transits to compare the chart with tonight's sky, Solar return for this year's return, or Progressions for the secondary progressed chart.
  4. Below the wheel: element balance, hemispheres, chart shape, essential dignities, fixed-star contacts, midpoints and the Arabic parts (Fortune, Spirit and more).

☀ Space weather

The Sun's active regions are projected onto the Earth-facing disk with the Earth-impact angle; the side panel lists flare risk, recent X-ray flares, Kp and the solar wind. Optional live refresh is in Settings.

🗓 Almanac

A month of rise/set, twilight and phases, with a Sky events list beneath: eclipses, oppositions, conjunctions and meteor showers.

☾ Moon, 📜 Codex, 🏙 Street maps

Moon mode gives the true phase and rise/set; the Codex is a historical page for each world; street maps open ~1 m/pixel imagery over seven US metros (the 🏙 button appears when the globe is over one).

🔭 Telescope — ASCOM Alpaca / INDI

  1. Put the phone/tablet on the same Wi‑Fi as the mount computer.
  2. On that computer, run an Alpaca server — ASCOM Remote (Windows) or the ASCOM Alpaca Simulator, or for INDI an Alpaca bridge such as indi-alpaca-bridge / INDI Web Manager.
  3. Note its address, e.g. 192.168.1.20:11111.
  4. Open 🧭 Sky tracker → Telescope, enter the address and press Connect.
  5. Pick an object from the list, then GoTo (or Sync).

If Connect fails: check the host firewall and that the server is listening; some servers must enable CORS for browser clients (the Android app bypasses this). Nothing is sent anywhere except the address you type.

📷 AR

  1. Allow camera and motion & orientation when asked.
  2. Open 📷 AR and hold the device up to the sky.
  3. If the overlay is rotated, tap ◀ / ▶ to nudge the heading, and FOV −/+ until it matches the real sky.
  4. No compass or gyro? Drag to look around; the overlay still finds objects.

AR alignment varies by device; the heading/FOV controls are saved and are the quickest fix.

☀ Live space weather

Optional. Off by default — enable it in ⚙ Settings or from the first‑run tour to refresh the Sun's active regions from NOAA. Only public data is downloaded.

🔵 Ambient music

The 🎵 Music button plays a soft, generated ambient loop — written by us and bundled offline, so there is no streaming and no licence. Adjust the level in ⚙ Settings.

Offline

Every map, star, label and catalogue is bundled in the app. No account, no ads, no tracking.

FIRST LIGHT — TONIGHT

THE MOONLRO Wide Angle Camera
ImageryNASA / USGS Astrogeology
Texture4096 × 2048
Mean radius
Axial tilt
DataBundled · offline
Named features
Labels shown
1-finger dragspin + tilt
2-finger dragspin + tilt
Pinch / scrollzoom
Double-tap spacesystem view
ViewCompressed
InfoTap a planet to visit it
Dragorbit 360°
Scroll / pinchzoom
Zoom out (globe)system view
ImageryNAIP aerial (public domain)
Resolution~1.2 m / pixel
Coverage
Dragpan
Scroll / pinchzoom
◉ Globe buttonback to planet