Shoot Forecast

Last updated: 2026-09-20

What it does

Shoot Forecast puts today's sun, moon, eclipse, and aurora highlights on one screen, along with weather, tides, comets, and more. It is a quick read on whether tonight is worth shooting.

What you need

A location. Set one with the Location picker at the top of the screen (Current Location or a saved location). Without one, the location-based cards show a dash.
A network connection for the live cards: Weather, Tides, Lens Fog Risk, and the Aurora forecast. The sun, moon, eclipse, comet, and Milky Way cards are calculated on the device.
The Moon card's phase and illumination need no location. Moonrise and moonset do.

How to use it

Set your location.
Scroll through the cards. Each shows a few headline values for today.
Tap a card to open its full tool, where one is available. Some cards are read-only summaries.
Tap the refresh icon at the top right to reload the live data (Weather, Tides, Lens Fog Risk, Aurora). It does not recalculate the sun, moon, or other calculated cards.
To reorder cards, press and hold a card's drag handle on a phone. On web or a wide tablet layout, tap Edit, use the arrows, then tap Done. Your order is remembered.

Reading the results

There is no single score. You judge the night from the cards:

Sun: Right Now (the current period, with a countdown to the next change), UV Index, Sunrise, Sunset, plus a chart of the sun's path with its current position.
Moon: phase name, illumination percentage, days into the lunar cycle, a path chart, and Moonrise and Moonset.
Eclipses: Next Lunar and Next Solar eclipse, with type, date, and time.
Aurora: Aurora Tonight shows Yes when tonight's forecast Kp reaches the Kp needed at your location, otherwise No.
Weather, Tides, Comets, Milky Way, Lens Fog Risk: short summaries that open their own tools.

Tips

Check the Moon card first for astro work: a bright Moon washes out meteors and the Milky Way.
A dash means no location is set. "Unavailable" means the live data could not load; try refresh.