Astrophotography planner

Some nights are worth losing sleep over.

Find your window into the universe. Clearhour turns whatever clear time you get into a real shoot plan — targets, exposures, filters, and mosaics, scheduled around what your sky, site, and gear can actually deliver tonight.

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One system

Everything talks to everything.

Sky Signal, your site, your gear, and tonight's target list all read from the same data — not five disconnected tools bolted together. Change one thing, and every plan downstream already knows.

1

Smart target selection

Point at what tonight can actually deliver — not a generic visibility chart.

2

Session & exposure planning

Every exposure, filter, and panel — scheduled around tonight's Sky Signal.

Hα + OIII, compiled into one shot
3

Multi-night & mosaic campaigns

Big projects that remember exactly where you left off.

Panel-by-panel, night by night
4

Gear Locker

Every plan already knows what your scope, mount, and filters can do.

5

Session library & sharing

Every session saved and organized in one place — share a finished project with a link.

Every session saved — share with one link
Sky Signal
Tonight · Joshua Tree, CA · Bortle 4
Strike 10:40 PM – 2:15 AM
Be ready to strike when the sky is right.
Tonight, sunset to sunrise
7:52 PM Sunset 9:35 PM Astro dark 4:10 AM Dark ends 5:53 AM Sunrise 6.6 h of true dark
Moonrise 11:20 PM · 12% illuminated — rises after the Strike window opens, too thin to knock it off Strike.
Smart target selection

Point at what tonight can actually deliver.

Sky Signal, your site, and your gear narrow the catalog down to what's genuinely worth the hours you have — not a generic visibility chart.

Andromeda Galaxy
Tonight's Best

Ranked, not just visible.

Every target above your horizon gets scored against tonight's Sky Signal, your site, and your gear — then held to a plan of three, so you spend the night on what's actually worth it instead of everything that's merely up.

Tonight's BestJoshua Tree · ranked
1
Andromeda Galaxy
4.1h clear · Bortle 4 · wide FOV match
Good
2
Rosette Nebula
2.3h clear · clears ridge at 11:40 PM
Good
3
Eagle Nebula
1.8h clear · low altitude, marginal seeing
Marginal
—
Elephant's Trunk Nebula
0.6h clear · barely above your ridge
Cut
Three is the cap — Clearhour ranks everything visible, then holds tonight's plan to the targets actually worth your hours.
Obstruction-aware scheduling

Knows exactly what your horizon blocks.

Map the ridge, the roofline, the tree next door once. Every plan afterward already accounts for it — down to the minute a target clears your obstruction and comes into range.

Tonight's domedrag or scroll · ↻ replay trace
Ridge
Rosette Nebula is behind the ridge until 11:40 PM — Clearhour already knows to hold it for later in the plan.
Session & exposure planning

Every exposure, filter, and panel — scheduled.

Clearhour matches targets to tonight's Sky Signal, your site's Bortle class and horizon, and your gear's field of view — not just what's technically above the horizon.

Veil Nebula
Multi-night & mosaic campaigns

Big projects that remember where you left off.

Multi-night, multi-filter, and mosaic session planning takes the guesswork out of target order, exposures, and filters across every clear night you get.

Elephant's Trunk Nebula
Gear Locker

Setup, tailored to your rig.

Your scope, mount, camera, and filters live in one place — so every target pick, exposure plan, and obstruction check already knows what your gear can actually do.

Your rig

RASA 8 "Beast"

RASA 8
Astrograph OTA
Advanced VX
GEM mount
Cooled camera
Imaging camera
Filter drawer
Starizona, 3 filters
Autofocus
Electronic focuser
Guide scope
Standalone guiding
Power station
Field power
In the drawer
IR/UV Cut
Broadband luminance
NBZ II
Hα + OIII duo
S2/O3
SII + OIII duo
Gallery

Shot with Clearhour session plans.

Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda Galaxy
Andromeda Galaxy4h 30m
90 × 180s · IR/UV cut
RASA 8 · Advanced VX
Horsehead Nebula
Horsehead Nebula
Horsehead Nebula4h 00m
96 × 150s · NBZ II
RASA 8 · Advanced VX
Orion Nebula
Orion Nebula
Orion Nebula2h 08m
64 × 120s · NBZ II
RASA 8 · Advanced VX
✦ Built in California with ❤️

I built the tool
I wished I'd had.

I'm still early in my astro-imaging learning journey, but I've learned what little I know from a generous community of YouTubers, Cloudy Nights posters, Redditors, and others willing to share what they've learned.

But I kept finding myself bouncing between weather forecasts, sky charts, planetariums, FOV calculators, tutorials, manuals, and threads trying to piece together a night. Too often, I was still figuring something out at the telescope while a clear night sky passed overhead — sometimes ones I'd taken pains to reach.

Clear hours are precious. Conditions have to cooperate, and those hours come from somewhere else: sleep, family, work, studying, life. So I built Clearhour to spend less time planning and more time looking up. I'm sharing it with the world's stargazing insomniacs and I hope you'll like it well enough to use and critique it so that I can make it better, for all of us.

— Live long and prosper 🖖, Chris, Clearhour

Make the most
of every clear hour.

Request early access and we'll reach out when there's room in the beta.

Request early access