Acquiring signal…
Hold your phone up to the sky and see what's passing overhead — satellites, planets, the moon and bright stars, placed live on your camera. Spot one and log it to help build MaxQ's citizen-science record.
Sky Lens overlays the satellites, planets, and stars above you onto your camera. First it needs to know where you're standing — the origin for every look-angle.
Your location stays on your device — it's only used to compute the sky, and only saved if you log a sighting.
Point & see
Hold your phone to the sky. Sky Lens overlays every bright satellite currently above your horizon — the ISS, Starlink trains, big rocket bodies — plus planets, the moon and bright stars, exactly where they are.
Know what's overhead
Positions come from live orbital elements (CelesTrak TLEs) propagated on your device against your GPS fix — the same engine behind MaxQ's pass predictions. A green ring marks what's actually naked-eye visible right now.
Log it — become a citizen scientist
Spotted it? Tap Log to record what you saw against what the model predicted. Or point at a tumbling satellite and Measure flash — a few seconds of camera brightness gives its rotation period, a real datum that needs no pointing precision.
A note on accuracy: phone compasses drift by a few degrees, so the AR overlay is a superb spotting aid rather than a survey instrument — use the Map view or the bright-star anchors (find Polaris) to check the alignment. Bright targets like the ISS are what a phone camera can actually capture; fainter satellites the tool helps you find by eye. Your location stays on your device and is only saved, rounded for privacy, when you choose to log a sighting.