ScopeNights

[TerryMcK]

I use ScopeNights on IOS to forecast good viewing conditions. Upto now it has been flawless and reasonably accurate. Much better than ClearOutside. However over the past couple of days it has been unable to retrieve a forecast on iPhone or iPad so I have emailed the developer.

Has anybody else who uses it found it has suddenly stopped working?

[Jkulin]

Yep Terry, I have been using it for years and experienced the same thing, so I contacted Martin at Eggmoon and he replied as follows: -

 

Quote

Hi,

 

Thanks for your feedback. Scope Nights uses a free weather service for the global forecasts, ie. outside UK & US, and there is no service level agreement. I will look into it, but if they’ve pulled the plug there’s not a lot I can do in the short term, so I may have to remove it from the App Store.

 

If you’re in the UK or US you should still be able to get a 5 night national stargazing forecast, even though it may complain about the missing global forecast. I found that after restarting the app, the latest 3-hourly UK or US forecast is displayed.

 

The free weather services are really not reliable enough. I could look into finding a reliable commercial global weather provider and create a new version of Scope nights, but there would have to be a small subscription fee to cover my costs. Is that something you’d be interested in?

 

I’ll post my findings via Twitter/Facebook in the coming weeks once I’ve had time to debug it.

 

Best regards,

Martin

So although what he say does work, I need to find an alternative, I don't want to use CO, as I always found it inaccurate, so if you know of any other Astro Forecast apps that work on the iPhone, then please let me know.

[TerryMcK]

That’s the same reply I got from Martin so he might be looking into it. I would be happy paying a small subscription as it is the on,y app I have found that is reasonably accurate.

[AstronomyUkraine]

10 hours ago, Jkulin said:

So although what he say does work, I need to find an alternative, I don't want to use CO, as I always found it inaccurate, so if you know of any other Astro Forecast apps that work on the iPhone, then please let me know

I use Meteoblue on my android, and it is very good. It has satellite video playback, which gives you up to date information on the direction clouds are coming from. It is available as an iphone app as well. The website version is even better, it will forecast astronomical seeing by the hour, and is usually fairly accurate.

[Jkulin]

Thanks Brian, I have bought the app and short-cutted the web page as I think that might be a good alternative.

[gpowers]

I take a look at https://en.sat24.com/ to get some idea of what is coming down the tracks , mostly clouds of course.