Location Help

SkySafari needs to know your location on Earth in order to correctly plot the location of objects in the sky. You can set this in the Location view from the main Settings screen. Four pieces of information are necessary:

There are three ways to set this information: by using your device's GPS or WiFi-based location services, by choosing a location from SkySafari's database, or by manual entry.

If you choose manual entry, a service like Google Earth can provide your latitude, longitude and elevation. Time zone offset information is available at http://www.timeanddate.com/. A time zone offset behind or west of Universal Time is expressed as a negative number; one that is ahead or east of UT is expressed as a positive number.

When entering a time zone offset from UT, always enter the offset for Standard Time only. SkySafari will automatically correct this for Daylight Savings Time if DST is currently in effect (and the appropriate switch in the Date & Time view is turned on). Don't enter a Daylight Savings Time UT offset here.

Please note: in SkySafari Plus and Pro, you cannot change your location settings while you are orbiting another object in the solar system. These settings only refer to your location on Earth. To change them, you first need to return home to Earth. See the Orbit button Help for more information.

Use Current Location

Tap the "Use Current Location" button to automatically determine your location from your iPhone's Location Manager, your Android device's GPS, or other information supplied by your internet service. When the location information is obtained this way, your location name is automatically filled in as "Current Location".

Choose Location From List

You can choose your location from a searchable list of thousands of cities in SkySafari's database. This is useful if GPS or Wi-Fi-based location services are not available - or if you want to see the sky from a place other than where you are located right now. For example, you could use this feature to view the sky as it will appear from a distant city or island where you're planning to take a vacation.

Tap "Choose from List" to see a list of locations, sorted by country. Choose a country to see a list of cities in that country. Choosing a city will automatically fill in the data for you. You can also search for any location in SkySafari's database by entering its name in the search field above the list of countries. If SkySafari finds more than one location which matches the name you entered, it will list all matching locations, and you can choose the one you want. If there is only one matching location, SkySafari will use it.

The location database in SkySafari's basic version includes every city worldwide with more than 100,000 inhabitants - a total of over 4,000 cities. In SkySafari Plus and Pro, the location database includes all cities with more than 10,000 people, plus more than 500 observatories, star parties, NASA centers, and other "astronomical" locations - a grand total of over 30,000 locations in all!

Save User-Defined Location

Tap the "Save User-Defined Location" to store a manually-entered location for retrieval later. To retrieve a user-defined location, tap the "Choose Location from List" button, then choose the "User-Defined Locations" group. You must name your location something other than "Current Location" before saving it as user-defined. If you choose the same name as an existing user-defined location, that existing location will be overwritten with the new longitude, latitude, etc. currently displayed in the Location view.

You can delete user-defined locations as follows:

  1. Tap the "Choose Location from List" button. Choose the "User Defined Locations" group at the end of the location groups list.

  2. Tap the "Edit" button at the top of the user-defined locations list.

  3. Tap the small, red, round, "-" button for each user-defined location you wish to delete. Confirm by tapping the red "Delete" button that appears to the right.

  4. When you are finished, tap the "Done" button at the top of the user-defined locations list.

Please Note: the User-Defined Location feature only available in SkySafari Plus and Pro.