Nightlist: a Planning List for One Fixed Horizon
Most sky apps are built for a planetarium view — everything, everywhere, all the time. Nightlist does less on purpose. It's built around a single fixed spot (your actual backyard, patio, or balcony) and answers one question: is tonight worth setting up for, and what will actually clear the roofline?
What it actually tracks
Six things, done narrowlyA fixed horizon profile
Set your rooflines, tree lines, and fences once, in degrees, so the list only shows what will genuinely clear them.
Moon phase and rise time
How lit the sky will be, and when moonrise starts working against a faint target rather than for it.
A plain-language seeing note
Not a raw index — a short line on whether tonight favors planets, wide fields, or neither.
A short, ranked target list
Three to five objects that clear your horizon tonight, ranked by how long they'll stay above it.
Bright-pass alerts
A heads-up for the ISS or another notably bright pass, timed to your actual location, not a regional average.
A private observing log
Freeform notes tied to each session, kept on the device, so a pattern across seasons is easy to look back on.
How it works
Three steps, onceMark your horizon
Sketch the obstructions around your one spot — roofline, hedge, streetlight glare — as a rough set of degree markers.
Check the evening summary
Before dinner, glance at moon illumination, a plain-language seeing note, and the list of objects likely to clear tonight.
Log what you actually saw
A short note after the fact turns into a record — useful for spotting which nights, and which targets, keep working.
A few questions
Short answersDoes Nightlist replace a full star-charting app?
No, and it isn't meant to. It's a narrower planning layer for one fixed spot — a lot of that detail is better handled by a dedicated charting app once you know what's worth pointing at.
Do I need a telescope to use it?
No. Most of the target list is chosen for naked-eye or binocular visibility first, with telescope-only objects marked separately.
Does it work for more than one location?
You can set up more than one horizon profile — useful if you split time between a backyard and a relative's driveway out of town.
Is the target list personalized to my exact horizon or a general estimate?
It's calculated against the horizon profile you set, not a generic regional estimate — the roofline and tree line you mark are what the ranking is built on.
Follow the build
Nightlist is still in active development. Notes on progress get folded into the same list as the journal — no separate signup, no spam.