Milky Way Planner
    What's new

    Changelog

    Updates and improvements to Milky Way Planner, most recent first.

    • Times in the PDF calendars (annual and monthly), the moon calendar PDF and the trip PDF now show in your location's local time, matching the Excel export and the planner. They were printing in UTC, which put them several hours off.
    • Fixed blog posts, Learn lessons and location guides failing to load on iPhones running iOS older than 16.4.
    • The trip PDF now shows each night's own sunrise, sunset and Milky Way times (they were a day early for stops in the Americas) and no longer counts your departure day as a night.
    • Behind-the-scenes security fix for the Premium PDF downloads.
    • Moonrise and moonset now follow the location's own day everywhere (planner, Excel, calendar files and PDFs), so they no longer change depending on your device's timezone.
    • New for Premium: a weather verdict for tonight and tomorrow night at each saved location. It reads cloud (low, mid and high), smoke and haze, and wind for the dark hours, and tells you whether the sky is worth the drive. When the forecast is too mixed to call, it shows you the numbers and leaves the call to you.
    • Complimentary Premium accounts now unlock right away.
    • Fixed a crash that could stop the site from loading for people browsing in private/incognito mode, or with site data blocked.
    • Fixed a rare map crash when navigating away from a dark sky location page on mobile.
    • The "Get Premium" button and the Excel/CSV exports now show a spinner while they work and tell you if something goes wrong, instead of silently doing nothing.
    • Fixed a broken image in the Milky Way arch blog post.
    • Fixed "Get Premium" checkout — clicking it now takes you straight to the secure Stripe checkout page instead of appearing to do nothing.
    • The planner's "Copy Link" button now copies the shareable link straight to your clipboard.
    • Password-reset emails now link back to the correct page.
    • Adding a favorite location is now instant — its light-pollution (Bortle) rating fills in a moment later instead of making you wait for it.
    • The light-pollution map overlay loads reliably again.
    • Accessibility improvements across the site: clearer screen-reader labels, better keyboard navigation, clearer form errors, and respect for your "reduce motion" setting.
    • A range of behind-the-scenes security and reliability hardening.
    • Newsletter emails now show blog image captions with proper styling (centered, italic) to match the website, instead of plain text under the image.
    • Fixed a rare error screen that could appear if the site was updated while you had it open — affected pages now reload automatically to the latest version instead of showing an error.
    • Fixed a rare crash on the planner for Safari users and anyone using a browser translator (Chrome Translate, Google Translate extension, etc.).
    • Bortle class tags on your saved locations now fill in reliably and stick — the first time your dashboard can read the Bortle class for a location, it's saved so future visits show the tag instantly.
    • Location search now finds parks and places even with slightly different spellings — e.g. "Great Smoky Mountain" now finds "Great Smoky Mountains National Park".
    • New blog post: Lyrids 2026 — everything you need to know to photograph the April meteor shower.
    • Changelog page added — you can now see a history of updates at milkywayplanner.com/changelog.
    • Click anywhere on the map to instantly see the light pollution level (Bortle class) for that spot.
    • Dark Sky Parks overlay — see IDA-certified dark sky areas displayed directly on the map.
    • Light pollution level is now saved with each of your favorite locations so it shows up without a lookup.
    • Bortle class badge now appears in the planner header as soon as you enter a location.
    • Fixed several stability issues on iOS and Safari.
    • New blog post: Scout Now, Shoot Later — how to plan locations months in advance.
    • Light pollution overlay — toggle a color-coded map of light pollution levels on top of any map on the site.
    • New page: /light-pollution with an interactive map and guide to understanding dark sky conditions.
    • New blog post: Understanding dark sky maps, light pollution, and the galactic core arc.
    • Improved mobile layout for the annual Milky Way calendar heatmap.
    • Learn section launched — 8 free lessons covering astrophotography technique, from camera settings to processing.
    • Trip planner: weather forecasts added to each stop so you can see conditions at a glance.
    • Trip planner: drive times and route lines between stops shown on the map.
    • Trip planner: share your trip publicly with a link so others can view it.
    • Trip planner: climate-aware packing checklist generated based on your destinations.
    • Trip planner: shooting quality score for each night, combining moon, Bortle class, and galactic core timing.
    • Moonrise and moonset times added to the shared trip view.
    • Locations page loads faster with better search and pagination.
    • Trip planner: Bortle class badge on each stop card.
    • Trip planner: shooting quality score included in Excel and CSV exports.
    • Trip planner: best-night highlights and trip summary now show shooting quality.
    • Forgot password flow added.
    • Welcome email sent when you create an account.
    • Fixed redirect after a successful upgrade to Premium.
    • Premium subscriptions launched — unlock unlimited planning for your location.
    • Export your calendar to a spreadsheet (XLSX) with moon phase and visibility ratings.
    • Moon phase percentage and visibility rating added to the calendar.
    • Typeahead location search — start typing and matching cities appear instantly.
    • About page added.