Put the Phone Down. The Sky Has Something to Show You.
Description and use
Look Up is an offline PWA that guides beginners to identify celestial objects without a camera or internet, encouraging them to look up with the naked eye.
Problem
Stargazing apps require a bright screen held up to the sky, making it hard for beginners to learn to look up without the phone.
Outcome
Look Up enables beginners to identify sky objects offline, reduces reliance on a bright screen, and encourages learning to look up with the naked eye.
Workflow
- 1. Show tonight list with direction, height and best time in plain words.
- 2. Start a quest as a puzzle with optional hints.
- 3. Use phone’s compass and tilt sensors to point and check alignment.
- 4. Ask the local AI guide questions about the target.
- 5. When found, display a fact and a 30‑second countdown to look up.
- 6. Encourage users to stop relying on the app.
Evidence
Every stargazing app I tried had the same problem: to see the sky, you stare at a bright screen held up against the sky.
Look Up is an offline night-sky field guide built around one idea: phone down, look up.
It tells you what is worth seeing tonight from where you stand, with direction, height, and best time.
When you find something, the app gives you a fact and a 30-second countdown that asks you to put the phone away and just look.
The AI is a small open-weight language model runs inside the browser, offline, and answers questions about the target.
The model never calculates a position and never supplies a fact.
I took Look Up outside for about 15 minutes… The sky was barely there… I could see two to four stars…
- Record date: 2026-10-11T18:41:12.219Z