Sky Safari 8

[Richard Navarrete]

Does anyone have any thoughts on Sky Safari 8? I’m still using 6.

Thanks,

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

[Paul Alsing]

My friend Kemer bought 8, and here are his comments to me. Take them for what they are worth.

"Sigh. Nothing here to see, folks … at least what we are going need. Well, somewhere in it there is the ability to load an image and it will plate solve; their help feature is still so terrible that, although I found it once, I can’t find it again. You don’t have to buy the extra stars and galaxies, but with the current 30% sale price, it still costs $35. They are really pushing a useless extra subscription, as they have in the past."

\Paul

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From: 'Richard Navarrete' via The Astronomy Connection (TAC) <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2025 5:55 PM
To: The Astronomy Connection (TAC) <sf-ba...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [TAC] Sky Safari 8

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[Richard Navarrete]

Thanks! I’ll stick with 6.

Richard

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[Jacob Ellwood]

I'm on 7 and have no complaints. I dont even see 8 available yet (android).

Jake

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[John Pierce]

6 -> 7 made a lot of UI changes that annoyed me, and took awhile to get used to.

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[Jeff Crilly]

>
> On Dec 21, 2025, at 7:48 PM, John Pierce <jhn.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 6 -> 7 made a lot of UI changes that annoyed me, and took awhile to get used to.

Indeed. I’m still on 6. I found 7 hard to use.

[Dan Durkin]

Hi Richard. If you are happy with 6, I advise caution with jumping to 8, or even 7. I accidentally made the change to 7Pro a couple years ago and got in too deep before discovering bugs. My friends who use 6 remain content.

One bug is "Light Time" appears to randomly switch to OFF, making the display of planetary events different to observed in time. I spoke to David Whipps of Simulation Curriculum about this at NEAF and he later emailed that a bug was found, but I still observe the problem and I can't make it reproducible. I add that prior to speaking to David, I got the run around on their website support page for months. So a bug was found, but apparently there's more still creating the problem. 

Another bug was with an inaccurate calculation of the Moon's phase. I discovered this after GSSP when some of us discussed how young the observed Moon was. This time I jumped to posted on Cloudy Nights. The bug was verified and "corrected".

BUT, just last week I was planning a January 22 public event and noticed that the phase is again off (now negative!), so something goes wrong with the Moon in 2026 - look out! 

As mentioned above, the user interface takes some getting used to. Plus, there used to be a setting where you could not only change the position of icons along the bottom, but also remove unwanted ones. The ability to remove unwanted icons disappeared months ago with an update. Even worse, they were joined by icons that appear to be related to the Pegasus SmartEye, which I have zero interest in. So, now the bottom of my display is cluttered with unwanted icons, which hey!, create necessary lgiht as well.

I'm hopeful 8 fixes will fix these issues, but I do not yet know and I am unwilling to pay more money to discover new bugs.

I hope this is helpful.

~ Dan

[Ted Hauter]

I liked a few versions ago which I lost changing phones.

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[Philip Manela]

Don’t know what sort of phone you use.   I recently did a factory reset of my iPhone and went to reinstall all the apps I care about.  Couldn’t find the old Sky Safari 6+ that had used and liked. Only options in the App Store were 7 & 8.  Then I learned that the App Store keeps a record of all your past purchases and lets you reinstall them.   So now I’m happily back on version 6, even though it appears to have been removed from the store. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 22, 2025, at 7:45 AM, Ted Hauter <thgo...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[David Kirjassoff]

I must be odd man out but I like it. Image upload and plate solving plus full catalogs seem worth the price of admission to me (I upgraded from 7 plus). It will support cameras (just the smarteye for now) and having my own images placed in the sky view is pretty cool. 

I also had problems with 7 plus getting stuck moving between AR and normal view and when rotating my phone portrait to landscape. Those are gone now. 

The subscription they sell is mostly unnecessary extras, the app is fully functional without.  I like that they didn’t force to a subscription model for the updated app. 

[Dan Durkin]

Hi David. The usefulness of 8 will depend on the user's needs, for sure. As purely a visual observer, I would like accurate and reliable information for our moon, the planets, and the planets' moons. Would you please check one item in 8? Please check the Lunar Phase > Current Phase for the Moon on January 22, 2026 at 8 PM. Is it correct and not negative, or is it negative and incorrect? Thank you. ~ Dan

[David Kirjassoff]

Still negative and incorrect. I’ll send a bug report to them. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Dec 22, 2025, at 1:15 PM, Dan Durkin <dan...@dalleradurkin.org> wrote:

Hi David. The usefulness of 8 will depend on the user's needs, for sure. As purely a visual observer, I would like accurate and reliable information for our moon, the planets, and the planets' moons. Would you please check one item in 8? Please check the Lunar Phase > Current Phase for the Moon on January 22, 2026 at 8 PM. Is it correct and not negative, or is it negative and incorrect? Thank you. ~ Dan

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[Dan Durkin]

Thank you, David! I posted on Cloudy Nights in a couple places. I've found that is faster than going through their support forum. Someone else has reproduced the SS8 bug. 

https://www.cloudynights.com/forums/topic/987626-skysafari-8-pro-for-apple/