Clear Night Coach

The sky clears, the gear is ready, and the hard part starts: choosing. Clear Night Coach makes the choice for you. One screen gives you the night's verdict, a hero target picked for your telescope, camera and site, and coach narration explaining why — with a rise, transit and set timeline so you know when to start. The full decision engine runs on your phone. Every verdict is computed on-device, not in the cloud, so the app keeps working at a dark site with no signal. It also refuses to bluff: cached forecasts age honestly — an older forecast is badged as such, and once it's too old to trust, the verdict word is withheld instead of faked. Ranking by sky geometry and moon still works regardless. WHAT YOU GET • TONIGHT Verdict, hero target, sky and moon in one look. • PLAN B Clouds arrived mid-session? A fresh pick for the remaining night in about half a second. • TARGETS The top five galaxies, nebulae and clusters for tonight, the night's comets alongside, plus full-catalogue search that will tell you no, with reasons ("too big for your sensor · poorly placed"). • SKY MAP Plan-view dome and a zoomable finder chart — real Hipparcos stars, our own constellation figures, Telrad rings, your camera-frame outline, and star-hop directions worked out from a named signpost star. Red night-vision mode. • COMETS A nightly timely list with hedged magnitudes and capture advice. • CONDITIONS Moon phase and illumination, darkness ladder, hourly cloud bands, wind, dew and seeing — expired inputs are dropped, never dressed up. • ALERTS A daily 4 pm verdict, a cloud-clear alert when a NO-GO turns GO during the evening, optional moon-window reminders, and supernova alerts. • WIDGET Tonight's verdict on your home screen, upfront about when it was last checked. • SITES Keep several locations and compare them side by side — worth the drive, or not? Each site has its own horizon map, so your trees and hills count against a target. • EQUIPMENT Smart-scope presets (Seestar, DWARF and more) or a full rig — optics, camera, filters, mount — with sub-exposure guidance tuned to what you own. • PREVIEWS DSS survey images framed at your exact field of view. • SESSION LOG With yearly stats. PRO Clear Night Coach is free to use. Pro features require a paid licence and are unlocked by entering your licence key in the app. ANYWHERE ON EARTH The engine works anywhere on Earth, with a full-sky catalogue and a hand-picked set of showpiece targets for both hemispheres — Northern and Southern alike. Made in Australia. A Windows desktop version is available from the Microsoft Store.