---
title: "Time Controls & Timeline"
description: "The bottom bar makes Sky View a time machine: set any date and time, scrub through the night, watch the sky move in real time, and read a target’s whole night at a glance from the 24-hour timeline. ### Date…"
url: "https://astro-pm.com/docs/sky-view-time-timeline/"
updated: "2026-07-12"
category: Astro PM App Guide / Framing
---

# Time Controls & Timeline

The bottom bar makes Sky View a time machine: set any date and time, scrub through the night, watch the sky move in real time, and read a target’s whole night at a glance from the 24-hour timeline.

### Date & Time Controls

Year / Month / Day spinners set the date (arrows step, boundaries wrap correctly), and a row of jump buttons moves through time: **-1d, -1h, -10m, +10m, +1h, +1d**, plus **Now** to snap back to the present. The time display shows the site’s local time.

### Live View

The **play button** switches Sky View into real-time mode – the sky drifts exactly as it does outside, continuously updated. Pause holds the sky at the current instant. Combined with the Daylight Sky overlay it makes a beautiful office-window planetarium; more practically, it shows you exactly what is placed where right now before you step outside.

### Reading the 24-Hour Timeline

The timeline strip encodes the whole day:

- **Background bands** – daytime, civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight, and true night, each a progressively darker shade. Where the band goes black is where imaging time lives.
- **Target altitude curve** – a gray line tracing the framed coordinates’ altitude through the day (higher on the strip = higher in the sky).
- **Minimum-altitude line** – a red dashed reference so you can see when the target is above your working threshold.
- **Now marker** – a dashed white line at the actual current time.
- **The scrubber** – drag the thumb (or click anywhere) to set the time; the sky canvas, overlays, and daylight tint all follow live.

[![](https://astro-pm.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-12-122259.png)](https://astro-pm.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-12-122259.png)
scrubb through time with controls at base

### The Moon on the Timeline

The moon button toggles a dashed **moon altitude curve** onto the timeline, and its label continuously reports the moon’s current altitude plus – when a target is framed – the **separation between moon and target** (e.g. “Moon 21° · 48° sep”). One glance answers the eternal question: is the moon going to be a problem for this target tonight? For the per-filter scheduling answer, see [Moon Avoidance Profiles](/docs/moon-avoidance-profiles/).