planet
Mars
A red dot that becomes a world — polar cap and all.
0.8 au
First light, tonight
lookup.
An astronomy and stargazing app — sky maps, telescope guides, dark-sky events, and the clubs that gather when the moon's away.
photo · Jozef Papp
● tonight · orion rising
01
How it works
Three steps to your first object.
/ 01
Set your sky
Tell vantage where you are and when you'll be out. It computes what's rising, what's bright, and what's worth the eyepiece.
/ 02
Point the scope
Star-hop from a bright anchor to the object, or let a goto mount find it for you.
/ 03
Log the night
Save what you saw, share it with your club, and build a lifetime observing log.
02
Everything but the clouds
The sky does the rest.
Live sky map
Planets, deep-sky objects, and the ISS, plotted for your exact latitude and time.
Dark-sky finder
Bortle-classed light-pollution maps to find the darkest sky you can reach.
Event calendar
Meteor showers, eclipses, and conjunctions — every peak date, on your calendar.
Gear guides
Honest advice on scopes, mounts, and eyepieces, from aperture to eye relief.
Club directory
4,000+ observing clubs, searchable by city, with gear lending.
Astro cams
Live 24/7 feeds from the ridge and the desert, when it's cloudy at home.
03
The deep, up close
Shot under a dark sky.
04
Connect the dots
A constellation, drawn one star at a time.
Cassiopeia is five bright stars and a story. Watch the lines connect — that's how every constellation was found, by people who looked up long enough to see a shape.
cassiopeia · visible tonight
05
The turning sky
One night, compressed to a minute.
star trails · Jiri Ikonomidis
06
Four first lights
The objects that hook you.
crater
The Moon
Craters, maria, and the terminator's razor edge.
1.3 ls
galaxy
Andromeda
2.5 million light-years, and it's coming to us.
2.5M ly
shower
The Perseids
120 meteors an hour, and the one that left a train.
120/hr
From the desk of Marcus Thorne
The first time Saturn isn't a picture.
Everyone remembers their first Saturn. Mine was through a borrowed 6-inch dob, in a field outside town, with a stranger's hand guiding the eyepiece. I looked. I said a word I won't repeat here.
The thing about Saturn is that you know exactly what it looks like — you've seen it a thousand times in books and posters. But when it's hanging there in the eyepiece, tiny and perfect and real, something clicks in your chest that no image ever clicks.
That's what vantage is for. Not the pictures. The click. We do the math — what's up, where, when, is the sky dark enough — so you can do the looking.
Marcus ThorneFounder, VANTAGE
07
By the numbers
Live, from our backend.
42.1k
deep-sky objects
18.6k
scopes logged
3.2k
events this year
118k
observers
08
Under the dark
What people see.
★★★★★
"I've owned the scope for two years and never found anything. Vantage found me Saturn in twenty minutes."
Dana R.New observer
★★★★★
"The dark-sky map is worth the whole app. I drove 40 minutes to a Bortle-2 and my jaw is still on the ground."
Pete L.Club member
★★★★★
"My daughter asked to go back out the next night. That's never happened with anything else."
Aisha M.Parent
09
The roadmap
Where we're going.
Q3 2026
Sky maps + 42k deep-sky catalog, live in beta.
Q4 2026
Augmented star-finder — hold up your phone and see the sky labeled.
Q1 2027
Scope control — drive a goto mount from the app.
Q2 2027
vantage hardware: a smart eyepiece that logs what you're seeing.
10
Questions, answered.
Do I need a telescope?+
No. The naked-eye sky — planets, the moon, the Milky Way, meteor showers — is plenty to start. The app tells you what needs a scope and what doesn't.
Does it work in the city?+
Yes, for bright objects like the moon, planets, and the ISS. For faint deep-sky stuff you'll want the dark-sky map to find darker skies.
Is it free?+
Yes — sky maps, the catalog, and the event calendar are free now and stay free after launch.
Does it track my location?+
Only the latitude and longitude you give it, to compute your sky. Nothing is sold or shared.
Can I use it offline?+
Yes — the sky map and catalog work offline. Live feeds and fresh ephemeris need a connection.
Can I log observations?+
Yes — every night gets a log entry you can export and share with your club.
The sky is already out.
look up.