Think of this as having an astro buddy in your pocket. One who's been out on a lot of cold nights and wants you to have a good one too.
TonightPlan exists because planning a night out shouldn't take longer than the imaging session itself. What's up tonight, when does it peak, what does the Moon do to it, does it work with your gear — all of it in one place, before you go outside.
Open the app, find something worth chasing, and go outside. Find the darkest spot you can manage. Set up your scope, let it find its bearings, tell it where to go, and wait.
Most images in this app were taken with smart telescopes, compact setups, or camera lenses — the kind of gear most people are actually using. The goal wasn't to show what's possible with the best equipment and unlimited time. It was to show what an honest, realistic session delivers. The notes are honest. The ratings are mine.
Go see.
TonightPlan is in active development · Version 0.9.221 · of targets currently have images from my own sessions — more are being added all the time.
The gear behind the images in this app — mostly smart telescopes, a few other rigs I use when a target needs them, and remote imaging from a service for the targets I can't reach myself. Most of what you see here was captured with compact, accessible gear. The goal isn't to show what's possible with the best equipment and unlimited time. It's to show what an honest, realistic session delivers — so you know what to expect when you point your scope at the same target.
The Seestar S50 was the smart telescope that reached a wide market, and ZWO deserves real credit for that — they made the format mainstream. At $499, it broke the price barrier — the Ford Model T of smart telescopes: not the first, but the one that put this format into everyone's hands. The software is the best in the category by a wide margin: powerful planning mode, mosaic mode, remote operation, frequent updates that genuinely add features. Equatorial mode with 30-second exposures works beautifully when there is no wind. Resolution and detail are good, especially in 4K mode. This is the scope I use most often — one in my backyard, and access to another at a remote hosting facility — my go-to for smaller targets like galaxies and smaller nebulae, and it handles the Moon and the Sun well too.
The compromises are also real. The price point shows in two places: mechanics and optics. Both axes have play, slewing sounds like a kitchen appliance, and tracking suffers in any kind of wind — neither unit handles wind well. Both show visible chromatic aberration — a purple halo around bright stars. I know how to fix it in editing, but I would rather not have to.
Despite all of that, this scope still earns its place. The limitations become things you work around rather than dealbreakers. The field of view can feel limiting on larger targets, which is why I reach for a different telescope when the structure is big. When the night is calm and the target is small, this scope delivers far above what the build quality suggests. ZWO has discontinued the S50 in favour of the S50 Pro. The improvements aren't yet confirmed, but my guess is better optics and an IMX585 sensor with a wider field of view.
The first time I took it to a dark sky and pointed it at M42, the result looked better than my first attempt at the same target three years ago — back when I was using an advanced rig and didn't yet know what I was doing.
The mosaic and multi-night modes are the best in the category. The 50mm aperture, 250mm focal length, and Sony IMX585 sensor hit a sweet spot between resolution and field of view. The mechanics are the best of any smart telescope I have owned — French engineering, solid, quiet, robust. You can feel the build quality the moment you pick it up. At €1,599 the Vespera II sits in a different segment than the entry-level smart telescopes, and the engineering is what you're paying for.
The limitations are real. It is heavy (5 kg), the battery does not last a full night so a power bank is essential, filters are sold separately and have to be changed manually, and the software leans toward simplicity in ways that occasionally feel restrictive. Alt-az only — no equatorial mode if you want one.
I use it mostly from my suburban backyard, with occasional short trips to rural skies nearby. When the target is large or the night is long, this is the scope I reach for first.
Vaonis recently announced the Vespera III at €2,490 — about 50% more than the II — with redesigned optics, stray-light shielding, improved image processing, full-night battery, more storage, and USB-C transfer. The optical improvements look real. The other upgrades — battery, storage, USB-C — are baseline expectations that could arguably have been there on the II already.
It is about as tall and wide as a large smartphone, just a few centimeters thicker, and still fits comfortably in a coat pocket. At around €400, it is also the most affordable smart telescope on the market, and it takes surprisingly good images of deep-sky objects. The sensor is small, the optics are small, and the results show their limits. Because the scope is so small, I take it everywhere — and that turns out to be the actual feature.
I just used it on holiday in Spain — southern targets I can't reach from Sweden, shot from a roofed terrace with limited visibility. It still worked. Those images are in the catalog now. For travelling light this is my top choice, and the dual lens system means it does deep-sky and Milky Way widefield in the same package.
The mechanics are excellent, the software is solid, and the image quality is genuinely impressive for the size. I haven't even started using the wide-angle lens for Milky Way work yet — that's still ahead.
The Seestar S30 Pro has become my favourite smart telescope for large-scale deep-sky targets — and what makes it so good is as much the software as the optics/sensor combo. The Sony IMX585 sensor with its 160mm focal length gives a wide field that fits most large DSOs in a single frame, and when that isn't enough it leans on the powerful, mature software the whole Seestar line is built on: seamless mosaics, an intuitive and genuinely capable planning mode, and full remote operation.
The hardware gets out of the way, too. There is still a bit of mechanical play on both axes, and I don't yet know if it will affect tracking in windy conditions, but it's whisper-quiet — I have to put my ear right up to it to hear it slew — and it packs into a small soft bag instead of a bulky styrofoam case, light and a joy to travel with.
It isn't the scope for everything. On small targets like galaxies the image quality is there, but the short focal length resolves less detail than longer instruments like the Seestar S50 or the Vespera II/III and Vespera Pro. There's also a wide-angle lens mode for Milky Way landscapes, with panorama stitching as well as star trail images — I gave it a brief try and wasn't taken with the results; my phone delivers more pleasing wide-angle Milky Way shots almost instantly, so that feature isn't for me.
But for large deep-sky targets, it offers the most capable compromise on the market right now.
A camera and a wide prime lens on a small motorised mount that follows the stars. This is the rig for the largest targets — entire constellations, wider sections of the Milky Way, dust complexes that span more sky than any telescope can show. A 14mm lens captures the largest structures in a single frame. Setup is quick and the whole rig fits in a backpack.
A camera and a longer prime lens on a small motorised mount that follows the stars. This narrows the view to single targets too large for most telescopes — Rho Ophiuchi, the wider emission complexes, dust regions you reach into rather than across. Still light, still portable, still a few minutes from car to first frame.
The first step into telescope territory. A small APO refractor on an equatorial mount with a dedicated astronomy camera — short enough for large nebulae like the North America Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy or the Eta Carinae Nebula as a whole, sharp enough to resolve real structure. Faster than longer telescopes and a lot more forgiving. A rig like this taught me the basics of astrophotography.
A medium sized refractor (4-inch) or a 6-inch imaging Newtonian on a sturdy equatorial mount with a dedicated astronomy camera. This is the workhorse of deep-sky imaging — the focal length and resolving power that handles most targets well, except for the smallest ones like tiny galaxies and planetary nebulae. Pair it with a mono camera and dedicated filters and the optical quality starts to show what it's really capable of.
Where committed starts. A large refractor (150mm aperture or more), an 8-inch or larger Newtonian, or a Schmidt-Cassegrain like a C8, C9.25 or larger — all on a sturdy equatorial mount. Reaching into the targets a smaller refractor can't — small galaxies, planetary nebulae, anything that demands resolving power. The smallest targets still don't give easily, even here. To me, this is roughly the upper limit of what makes sense without a dedicated observatory.
Some images in this app were made from data I didn't capture myself. Telescope.Live is a remote imaging service that lets you choose targets, request data, and process the result. I have been using their data for years — for images on my channel, on my website, and now here in this app. You don't need to own a telescope to start. All you need is good data, curiosity, and the willingness to learn.