Nightpiece
01 · Point
Raise it
Hold the phone up and the sky appears behind your camera, lined up with the real one.
A night sky for iPhone
Hold your phone up to the night sky.
Nightpiece is a live, hand-turned 3D sky. Raise your phone and the Moon, the planets, the space station and the meteor showers appear exactly where they are.
Made for iPhoneSee how it works
- No account
- No server
- Free to start
How it works
Point.
Lock on.
Learn.
Three gestures, no menus to learn. The sky is computed on your phone for the place you are standing and the minute it is.
02 · Lock on
Tap anything
A ring wraps around the object. Turn the time dial and watch it move across the night.
03 · Learn
Know what you see
Every object has its own page: where to look, when it rises and sets, how far away it is.
A calm first minute
Open it.
Look up.
Three short screens and you are in the sky. The home screen takes the colour of the real sky outside, from deep night to a pale day, and the Moon and planets are lit by the real Sun, so a crescent Venus looks like a crescent Venus.
- The real sky colour The home screen follows the sky where you are: night blue, dusk orange, a pale day.
- Lit by the real Sun The Moon, Venus and Mercury show their true phase, down to a thin crescent.
- 13 languages English, Turkish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish and Simplified Chinese.
The Moon, as it really is
Lit exactly
how it is lit.
Nightpiece does not use a picture of a Moon. It draws a 3D Moon and lights it from the real direction of the Sun, so the phase on your screen is the phase in the sky.
The slider starts at today's moon and moves through one full cycle of about 29.5 days.
The whole shelf
Every planet
in the room.
The Sun, the Moon, the planets and the space station are modelled in 3D and turn under your finger. Each one sits where it really is tonight.
Sun
Never look straight at it.
Mercury
Always close to the Sun.
Venus
The brightest planet.
Mars
Small, red and easy to spot.
Jupiter
Bands, and four big moons.
Saturn
The one with rings.
Uranus
Barely visible in very dark skies.
Neptune
Needs a telescope.
Space station
One lap every 93 minutes.
Moon
Real phase, real craters.
Tonight
What is up
there tonight.
Open the app and the night is already laid out: what rises, what is worth a look, and when it gets properly dark.
Passes
Space station
See when the ISS crosses your sky, where it starts and ends, and how high it climbs. When there is no visible pass, the app says so.
Peak nights
Meteor showers
Peak night, how many per hour, and whether the Moon will wash it out. The radiant is marked in your sky.
Solar and lunar
Eclipses
Only the eclipses you can actually see from where you are.
Civil to astronomical
Twilight
The slices of the night, and the moment the sky is truly dark.
88
Lines on request
Constellations
All 88 as thin tubes between the stars. Off until you want them.
Widgets
The Moon on
your Lock Screen.
Moon, tonight and next-event widgets for the Home Screen, and Lock Screen widgets that stay readable in the dark. They are drawn in the same clay style as the app and use the place you chose.
Privacy
Your sky.
Your business.
Nightpiece has no accounts and no servers of its own. The sky is calculated on your phone.
0
accounts
0
trackers
0
servers of ours
- Location stays on your phone. It is used to work out your sky. Turning coordinates into a place name is done by Apple.
- The camera is a live backdrop. It is never recorded, saved or sent anywhere.
- Alerts are scheduled on your phone. No push server, no device token.
- One request leaves the app. It asks CelesTrak for the public orbit data of the space station. It carries nothing about you except what any web request does, your IP address.
Nightpiece Pro
Free to start.
Pro adds the rest.
Nightpiece
Free
- The 3D sky dome and the AR sky
- The Moon, the planets and the space station
- Tonight, twilight, meteor showers and eclipses
- The Moon widget
- The Night Blue look
Nightpiece
Pro
- Every widget, look and app icon
- Meteor, ISS, full moon and eclipse alerts
- The night dial, 30 days either way
- Constellation lines
Choose Yearly, with a 7-day free trial for new subscribers, or Lifetime, one payment and yours for good. Prices are shown in the app in your own currency before you buy. The yearly plan renews automatically until you cancel it in your Apple account settings. Have a code? Use Redeem code in Settings or on the Pro screen; Apple handles it.
FAQ
Good
questions.
Do I need an account?
No. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to log in to.
Does it work without internet?
Yes. The sky, the Moon and the planets are calculated on the phone. Only the space station needs a fresh download of its orbit data every now and then; the last copy is kept on your phone.
Does the camera record anything?
No. The camera image is shown behind the sky and nowhere else. There is no photo or video capture in the app, and it cannot see your photo library.
What if I do not want to share my location?
Choose a city by hand. Everything works the same, except that the AR view then points at magnetic north.
Which iPhones does it need?
An iPhone with iOS 18 or later. Nightpiece is made for iPhone only. A phone without motion sensors can still use the app by dragging the sky.
Which languages?
Thirteen: English, Turkish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish and Simplified Chinese. Nightpiece follows the language of your iPhone.
Nightpiece
Look up.
Made for iPhone
