Satellite Safari App Reviews

Great for visualizing where in the sky ISS will flyover.

This is a great app! I have really enjoyed it and am amazed at everything it contains. I am amazed at the number of satellites over my head. Get this app!

I have used their software an app for many years and find it to be very professionally done and easy to use. I use this particular software for helping me see what GPS satellites are in the sky at the time.

So much work went in to this and its just so buggy. Spend your money elsewhere.

Another fun app. 2thumbs up. How about adding notifications for northern lights from CMEs based on location?

As mentioned in a previous review, this app will NOT give you a listing of satellites visible for a certain evening. For that Id suggest GoSatWatch. What this app DOES do is let you select a specific satellite and gives you pass and position information. It also gives a very nice description of the satellite. And of course, it retains the beauty of SkySafari. For now, consider this a complement to other apps, not a duplicate. Im sure Southern Stars will have more goodies in this app in the future.

This app is an easy to use way to learn more about some of the largest and brightest satellites in orbit around the Earth. It finds your location using your devices geo location services, and then calculates the position of satellites, updating them frequently. Click on a satellite and get more information on it, including many photos, and data on upcoming passes when you may be able to view it. You can even set alerts. You can view the satellites path from your position on earth, as an orbit around a 3d manipulate blue globe, as a path on a 2d map of earth, or from the near the satellite itself, showing a 3d rendering of it, simulating the lighting angle from the Sun. When using the sky view, the app also draws constellations and labels brighter stars and planets so you can get your bearings. The app also has a "Night Vision" mode that turns the screen red to help preserve your night vision. As an amateur astronomer, I can use this app to figure out what that satellite that I just saw was, or to plan for observing and photographing passes by the International Space Station. For the casual night sky stargazer, or space technology buff, the information provided on the satellites would be really interesting. I really recommend this app. Theres really nothing like it out there.

This is a beautiful app. The possibilities for use during outreach events are mind boggling. Considering how much Ive seen Sky Safari evolve in the past few years, Im confident this will be yet another indispensable app from Southern Stars!

Super smooth interface, with lots of different ways to get the same info but trough different visualizations. Very well done!

Sky Safari+ is my fav astro app... Ive bought and deleted them all except 3 and this is my fav. HAD TO GET SATELLITE SAFARI of course... though I have other good sat tracking programs. I still enjoyed this one upon my first trial... but a few things. 1. Crashes (several times) had to kill and restart... when in satellite view above earth - using time ... 10 seconds and then punch zooming in or out. (locked up and there was some flashes as if timer was ticking). Im sure theyll fix this. 2. I would like to see a green text overlay of SAT DATA like magnitude as it progresses (on all views). I was impressed that the sun actually lights the sat... from actual direction in sat view. But I hate hitting "INFO" and leaving my view to see magnitude though various stages of passage in my area. I would like to see that in the various views. 3. I was hoping that in satellite view - I could see other sats? maybe I think I have this option turned on. Like the Dragos(sp)? cargo sat... that travels with ISS can ISS be seen from it? or visa versa? I tried and couldnt see one from the other. 4. FIND MY LOCATION never works for me at home. I dont know why. So I MUST have a manually enter location option. Ipads do NOT have GPS. Also such a app should list "tonights best" sat passages and have alerts. I did find an alert page but didnt see anything listed or how to add a sat to the alerts page. I shouldnt have to select and set alerts... it should inform ME - not me it... by my settings like magnitude limit, how high above horizon etc. Then give an alarm prior (I did set a 2 minute alert) but nothing was listed. Views are stunning, but "tracking and usage needs work". It should be a tool... not a media generator. Im sure all these will be address in updates. Thanks! Thanks for another great product, if reading this to decide to buy... Dont hesitate. Their astro apps are THE BEST available.

So far this is shaping up to be a good satellite watching program, but here are some features that would be very useful: 1. Show the number and age of the elset being used so that observations can be later verified. 2. Info field that shows whether a satellite is an active payload. 3. Allow the user to disable automatic updating so that observations can be attempted using aged elsets. 4. In the search, allow filters to be used based on type of satellite, active payloads, will be visible within X time period, etc. The reason these features are useful to amateur astronomers is the requirements for the Astronomical Leagues EOSOC satellite observing award program. If we can access that information from the app it removes the step of tracking down the elset info from Celestrak. If those features get added into a future release, it will definitely be worth the money. As it is Im on the fence as to its ultimate usefulness to serious amateur astronomers.

I have no doubt they will get there as sky safari is one of the most amazing apps on the ipad. Nonetheless, as it is right now, this app needs Passover information and more satellites. O dont even think it has iridium satellites although I could be wrong. Sine this is version 1 I have to assume the app will get better

ISS transits accurately portrayed. Great aid in preparing novice watchers where to look, relative speed and visual magnitude to expect.

Already the best satellite program, and it keeps getting better! A full sky chart view showing the eclipse point would be a nice addition.

Being a bit of a space geek, Ive been looking for something that I can track the international space station. I was very impressed with this app, where it has so many satellites to track. Absolutely the best app on the face of the planet!

If you want to watch sats fly overhead, this app will not allow you to be easily alerted to a nights worth. If you only want to watch the orbits of a particular satellite, such as the ISS, this app can help at its current stage of development. Version 1.1 advances the programming, yet is still based on selecting individual satellites. It is impossibly tedious to prepare an entire nights viewing, because one must select dozens of individual sats and each of their many individual appearances during the course of the night, and then set notifications for each. The apps slow response worsens the problem. It needs a one, or few, tap method to say, "Alert me to all the sats that will be visible tonight at this location, between these hours." Or, follow the model of GoSatWatch, which simply posts alerts to every rising sat meeting criteria for location and brightness until told to stop. The pick list for manual locations includes not a single town in my state! Much better to allow locations to be picked from Google Maps. Fortunately, it is possible to enter lat/long coordinates instead, so at least the app is finally useable through a convoluted method. Im still not worried. These are the best programmers on iOS. Theyll get it right, and when they do, this sat tracker will be more sophisticated and flexible than anything else available. The problem seems to be that the underlying guts, borrowed from SkySafari, were never intended to find batches of rising objects, and all the nifty new features were intended for tracking the SkyCube mission. It makes sense to extend that to tracking any single satellite, but batch processing of groups of sats still needs to be worked into the patch. Prior review: A Magnificent Failure * * This app was designed to track the future SkyCube mission, and will be excellent for that. The trouble is that tacking on the ability to fly along with other named satellites is not the same as being able to find a set of otherwise unknown sats to see. A reasonable buy anyway, in the hope that it may be upgraded. Satellite Safari leverages the code base of SkySafari and is exquisite eye candy, but its useless for tracking satellites. No one knows whats flying overhead, so there is no point requesting sats by name, individually, to discover when they may become visible. The app needs, instead, to tell us what we could see, specifying when and where to look. A proper satellite tracker creates a list of all the sats to be seen that night, based on user-defined settings for magnitude and elevation (or an algorithm for the number of sats to be seen), and then alerts the user to pending passes while mapping the fly-over. To compare how a satellite tracker should work, try GoSatWatch. It will be obvious that Satellite Safari potentially excels at the mapping, but lacks in all other regards. iPod owners and anyone who may, someday, be out of range of WiFi and cellular, or anyone who wants to plan observations for a site other than wherever they are at the moment -- you are unwelcome here. There are no provisions for manually creating and storing locations. Depending solely upon Location Services is always sloppy. My WiFi does not locate my iPod, so Satellite Safari thinks Im at the location N 0°0" E 0°0" which I most certainly am not. So, even if the software were designed to be useful, it could not predict any fly-overs for my location! Much of the information detailing specific satellites is out of date. The International Space Station is described "...as of November, 1998," looking ahead to what are now the long-past milestones planned for what were, back then, future years. Im amused, not worried. Southern Stars are great programmers. Theyll fix this.

Some reviewers dont even use the app before slamming it.

Southern skys products are all excellent this one included. Good job! BTS

Ive been wanting an app like this to help spot those elusive satellites racing overhead. This app does this and more. One of the best features is the future timeline that shows when satellites are in their visible range over my position - including the rise peak and set times. It also gives a visual representation of where they are in the sky - so cool. Worth every penny.

Very good for amateur astronomers and astrophotogrphers!!!