It’s been about 2 1/2 years since I covered astronomy apps in the “Galileo’s Shadow” column (namely the Sky Guide app). I did cover the Apollo 11 JFKMoonShot app back in July, however the focus of today is once again Astronomy apps.
With my increasing interest in astronomy and related activities, I knew that I eventually need to get more powerful tools to assist as well as look for a second scope to accompany my Celestron TravelScope 70mm refractor (with 400mm focal length). It’s the same one I used for previous “Galileo’s Shadow” articles to distantly view the gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
To add to my growing virtual astronomy aids, I downloaded the following app alongside my long-used Sky Guide app which is still a highly recommended one . . .
The latest astronomy one is called Star Chart Infinite. It only costs about $6.00 (as of Jan 2020). Like other apps, it uses your phone’s GPS coordinates, location, and time of day to help you point your phone in the direction of certain stars and planets. But there are even greater features that make this app desirable it lays out pictoral representations of constellations, star names, planet names, comets, asteroids, and even orbital satellites and pieces of space debris!
Now in addition to Sky Guide, Star Chart Infinite is another app-driven planetarium and real-time star chart. When you run it, you can aim your smart phone or smart pad at the sky and get real-time information on the positions of stars, planets, dwarf planets, comets, asteroids, nebulas, meteor showers, distant/visible galaxies, and even orbital spacecraft.
View of Constellation Orion with Star Chart Infinite
It has advanced GPS technology and a precise 3D simulation of all visible space seen in the sky. It even has the feature to show the stars visible from the other side of the planet if you point it toward Earth to visualize the astronomical objects that do not rise or set on the horizon depending on your Earth planetary location (Northern or Southern Hemispheres).
It also shows graphical/artistic renditions of the image that the constellations make up for easier visualization, along with the given names.
Zoom in on Orion constellation’s red-giant Betelgeuse.
By selecting a star via the touch screen, you can get information on a star’s name, the type of star, size, distance from Earth (Miles, Kilometers, Light-Years, etc.), luminosity, and azimuth location in the sky (which seems to move as Earth rotates below).
See stars and constellations from other planets’ vantage point, and real time locations of planetary moons.
Another feature that’s notable is that you can select a planet and see a zoomed-in version that shows the real-time visible light-to-shadow appearance you would see through a telescope, or see the stars and other planets from THAT PLANET’S OWN vantage point (including our own System’s Sun . . . or Sol, as in “Solar System”).
Views of Orion, Taurus, and Pleiades from each of the known Solar System planets.
For example, here are all eight known planets in the Solar System (in order from closest to farthest from the Sun) from high orbital points that looks towards constellations Orion, Taurus, and Pleiades (all in the background). You will see the angle of the sun varying with each view (note: the more Sun visible, the closer to the constellations it is). Unless you have a larger telescope, you may not be able to easily spot dwarf planets like Pluto and Eris (discovered in 1930 and 2005 respectively), but you can plot their locations and trajectory with this app as well.
Spot positions of renowned spacecraft, satellites, and even ISS.
In this zoom-up of Earth (from above), a great feature of Star Chart Infinite is that it can point out, in real-time, the location of well-known spacecraft and satellites. This includes the location of the Hubble Space Telescope, ISS, and even the top-secret US Air Force X-37B space plane.
Night View mode for astronomers to preserve night vision.
For astronomers, preserving their night vision is important to find those very-faint objects in the sky. With “night-vision” mode, the screen and graphics can be turned to a mono-chromatic red color (same used in historic photo development labs and by current astronomers near their gear at a viewing sight).
I greatly enjoy this astronomy app. The one thing that it could use is some longer, more detailed wiki-entry description of each astronomical object and other relevant info. However, these are readily available from other sources and I found the graphical and point-of-view features to make this a worthy tool to help astronomers and astrophotographers.
I invite anyone who loves stargazing to also get this app and use it to help further your observation of the visible universe.
For The Great Galactic Space Gimmick, I’m Gimmick Commander Ben Faltinowski! 🙂
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DISCLAIMER: This is a review of a space related app. This article was written voluntarily and royalty free. It is believed this constitutes fair use.