NearLight

Description

NearLight is a 3D space simulator that spans the whole journey of an astronomy fan: from a real telescope under tonight's sky to a relativistic starship and the edge of a black hole. Explore the Solar System on exact orbits, fly through 1,000 light-years of real stars, and see with your own eyes what the Lorentz factor does to time.

Is your favorite sci-fi movie physically right? Check it.

YOUR NIGHT SKY, TONIGHT

Step onto a field on Earth and look up: the real sky for your location and moment: by GPS or from an offline catalog of 34,000 cities. Six telescopes stand ready, from a 70 mm beginner refractor to a 12-inch truss Dobsonian, with eight eyepieces, a Barlow, Moon and nebula filters (UHC, OIII), every instrument with its true magnification, field of view, image orientation and brightness. The full Messier catalog is in the sky: over 40 objects as real as astrophotographs at their exact positions and sizes, every object rebuilt from reference photos, 341,000 Tycho-2 stars deep in the field. Light pollution (Bortle scale), atmospheric seeing, twinkling, horizon extinction, even moonlight washing the galaxies out of the eyepiece, this sky behaves like the real one. A Redlight mode protects your dark adaptation. Wind the clock to August 12, 2026 and stand in Iceland or Spain: the total solar eclipse happens with true geometry, corona included. "Tonight's Sky" builds your observing plan, the "Top Objects now" wheel rolls absolute beginners to the ten best sights of the moment and all the Messier objects wait to be discovered, for good.

THE SOLAR SYSTEM

The Sun, all 8 planets and their major moons on ephemeris-true orbits, validated against JPL data: moon transits and shadow events at the correct times, Saturn's ring shadow, true axial tilts. Classical Spaceflight flies real missions: departure burn, coast, flip, capture burn into orbit, including Voyager-class gravity assists past Jupiter.

INTERSTELLAR

Search and inspect 8,000+ real stars with names, distances, stellar data, exoplanet hosts and their neighbors within 10 light-years. Plan relativistic journeys in Constant-c or Constant-g mode with acceleration, coast and braking phases. Compare Onboard Travel Time (OTT) with Earth Travel Time (ETT), read the length-contracted distance, peak speed and the energy bill (Joule, TWh, PWh or "Sun-output time"). Ride along in three cameras and near light speed the cockpit shows real relativistic optics: star aberration, Doppler colour shift and beaming.

THE WHOLE MILKY WAY

Pull back until the galaxy fits on screen: 100,000 light-years across, four spiral arms, the barred core: shaped from the NASA/JPL photograph down to the dust lanes and the red glow of its star-forming regions, with up to 450,000 stars drawn at once. Sol sits where it really does, 27,000 light-years out on its thin local arm. Pick any point and a route runs there from home, telling you the distance, the region you are aiming at: bulge, inner disk, rim and whether you are heading coreward or out. Then fly it, with the same relativistic clocks: a trip to the galactic centre costs a few decades on board and 27,000 years on Earth.

BLACK HOLES

70+ known black holes from TON 618 to fictional Gargantua, rendered with a scientific Kerr ray tracer. Change mass and spin, sink toward the event horizon or the innermost orbit, and watch two clocks drift apart: one hour here, seven years on Earth, the Interstellar scenario, on your own screen.

6-DoF navigation: rotate, pinch-zoom, pan on every axis

Auto rotation, labels, chase and cockpit cams, one-tap Reset View

Ambient space music and living nightscape sounds.

Native on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

English and German, fully localized including VoiceOver

Fully offline: no account, no tracking, and your location never leaves your device.