Space and astronomy apps for Apple Vision Pro: an honest guide

Updated October 26, 2026: for twelve Vision Pro space and astronomy apps compared side by side, see our 2026 guide: The best Vision Pro apps for space and astronomy (2026) →

I make Everdust, one of the apps below, so read this with that in mind. I've tried to describe each app by what its own App Store listing says it does, and to say plainly when another app is the better pick. All five are free to download; some sell subscriptions or upgrades inside, and Everdust has an optional Everdust Plus purchase. Store details were checked on October 25, 2026.

The short answer

You want to know what's in tonight's sky: Sky Guide or Night Sky (iCandi Apps).
You want to tour the solar system with real NASA data: Space Vision.
You want a space museum of spacecraft, missions and telescope images: Astronoma.
You want to play with space physics, such as colliding galaxies, black holes bending light and stars forming from dust, or to fly from the real sky into a nebula: Everdust.

They overlap less than you'd think. Two of these apps are star maps, one is a solar-system tour, one is a museum, and one is a simulator (which, since version 1.1, also puts the real night sky around you).

Sky Guide

Sky Guide by Fifth Star Labs is a star map. Its listing describes identifying any star, constellation, planet or satellite, an AR mode that lays figures over your real sky, alerts when the International Space Station passes over, and time controls for seeing where the Moon will be later. It's also on iPhone and iPad.

Pick it if you want to learn the real sky above you.

Night Sky

Night Sky by iCandi Apps is a personal planetarium for identifying stars, planets, constellations and satellites. Its listing mentions a visionOS app for its guided Aura Sky Tours, plus an AI astronomer you can ask questions (a subscription). It's on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch too. (It isn't related to Everdust's Night Sky, a feature inside Everdust, below.)

Pick it if you want sky identification with guided tours, across all your Apple devices.

Space Vision

Space Vision by Visionly is built only for Apple Vision Pro. Its listing describes a solar system driven by NASA data, so the orbits sit where they really are. It also offers Space Missions that fly alongside real spacecraft (Voyager 1 is free; others need its SV+ subscription) and a guide called Soluna.

Pick it if you want an accurate, data-driven tour of the planets and real missions.

Astronoma

Astronoma is a space museum for Vision Pro. Its listing describes high-resolution images from NASA, ESA and others with audio commentary, 3D models of spacecraft, planets and comets you can turn in your hands, stories of astronomers and astronauts, telescope footage and a map of launch sites.

Pick it if you want to look at real images and real hardware and learn the history.

Everdust

Everdust is the one I make. It's a simulator first: every world is a live particle simulation, not a video, and your hands move it. Since version 1.1 it also has Everdust's Night Sky, the real sky with flights to the planets and deep-sky wonders, and Solar System to Scale.

Everdust's Night Sky: the real night sky all around you, for your place and time. Look at a planet, the Sun or a deep-sky wonder and pinch to fly there; the wonders are real photographs from Webb, Hubble, ESO and other observatories, given depth.
Solar System to Scale: choose how big the Sun is and walk out to Neptune with every size and distance true, or set planets and stars side by side.
Galaxy Collision: two galaxies merge, with up to about a million stars each pulled by gravity. You can watch it in your room or step inside it.
Black holes that bend light, including a spinning one you can walk up to.
Hand-tracked games built on the same physics: Black Hole Golf, Galaxy Billiards, Lightfold (split white light into colour with prisms) and more.
Narrated science stories, from the first light after the Big Bang onward, where every chapter is a live world you stand in.
Music: the worlds move with your own songs, free Mixes or the room. The sound is analyzed on the headset and never recorded or sent.

It's free to download, with no ads and no account. Night Sky, every wonder and all of The Story of Everything are free, and so are Fireworks, Galaxy Billiards, Black Hole Golf, Lightfold and Orb Popper; Everdust Plus, an optional in-app purchase, unlocks the rest of the other Stories and games. Everdust is also on Google Play for Android. You can try a few worlds in your browser first at everdust.ai/play, such as the galaxy collision simulator and the black hole simulator game.

Pick it if you want to see how things like galaxy mergers and star birth happen, and play with them, or to fly into the nebulae overhead. To name every star and satellite, a star map goes deeper.

How to choose

Ask what you want to come away with:

To find Saturn tonight, use a star map (Sky Guide or iCandi's Night Sky).
To know where the planets really are and follow real spacecraft, use Space Vision.
To see real photos and hardware, use Astronoma.
To build intuition for gravity and light by touching them, or to fly from the real sky into a nebula, use Everdust.

They're all free to start, so the honest advice is to install two and see which one you keep opening.

Questions people ask

Is there a Universe Sandbox for Vision Pro? Universe Sandbox itself isn't on the App Store as of this writing; it's sold on Steam. Everdust is the closest in spirit (colliding galaxies, gravity, black holes), but it's less of a free-form sandbox: you play with ready-made worlds rather than build solar systems from scratch. More in Universe Sandbox vs Everdust.

Which of these work without a subscription? All five can be downloaded and used for free. The AI features of iCandi's Night Sky and some Space Vision missions need subscriptions. Everdust is free to download, with an optional Everdust Plus purchase; its Night Sky, Solar System to Scale, The Story of Everything and five of its games are free in full.