Dark Sky Meter

I’m not sure it’s working on my new iPhone. It kept giving me an error code that it was TOO DARK! It was one of the clearest dark sky nights last night and I really wanted to log it into the data.

One glaring issue. Not everyone uses UTC regularly. The mobile devices that the app is installed on uses local time. This app need to have the ability to do so also for where it uses time display. It is easier to just look and see local time and not have to worry about time offsets and doing the math.

I noticed sky conditions at my observing locations varied and I wanted to test this, and was looking for a tool. This app performs very nicely and I see the variability quantified according to a standard scale. Also developer very friendly and helpful. I’m going to use this to map out all my observing locations. Well done.

App does not provide any reading other than “too dark for device” when I travel to dark site locations and the app constantly freezes when trying to use the conditions feature.

Provides consistent results for locations between 18.00 and 21.00, I don’t bother with brighter skies and haven’t been to darker skies 21.00 yet. Thank you for this app 😁

Having a dark sky meter on your phone is just brilliant. When I first tried this on iPhone 13, it was close to what I expected and what lightpollutionmap.info said for my dark sky site. With iPhone 14, however, I can’t seem to trust it. It either tells me my Bortle 4 sky is too dark for the device, or I get a reading that is significantly darker than reality. Perhaps a little more tweaking is needed. Other than that, the app is easy to use and doesn’t crash on me. I wish you only had to take the dark frame once per session, but if you’re taking a lot of readings I suppose the sensor temp can climb.

Crashed twice right out of the gate.

There are no instructions, and both the “developer website” and “support” links take you to an essentially content-less map full of dots. The first time I ran it it responded “Invalid, try again.” No explanation. The second time... “Too dark for device.” YOU HAD ONE JOB.

I used this app for years in my backyard with an iPhone 6 Plus, getting readings between 19.35 and 19.5 which seemed to agree with what was visible in the sky. Since getting an iPhone 11 Pro I get readings around 17.30. The light in my backyard did not change that much in a week. Update 12/28/21: After getting the update I was back to readings around 19.5. I received an actual SQM meter as a Christmas gift. It shows a reading of 18.44. So while the app is back to its old readings they appear to be on the optimistic side. I am deleting it at this point.

I used to use this app reliably with my old iPhone 5s, and the results agreed well with a dedicated sky meter costing $300. But now, using an iPhone 11 Pro, the results are WAY OFF. I took both iPhones out, side by side, the 5s gave a reading of 19.45 (correct), while the iPhone 11 Pro gave a reading of 17.58 (WRONG!). Can’t trust this app anymore.