A program for identifying stars in the sky. Big review: Apps for exploring the night sky

Stellarium mobile is a program for Android OS. The application simulates the starry sky, allowing you to have your own planetarium. Stellarium creates a realistic map of the starry sky and allows you to explore astral luminaries and constellations without resorting to extraneous tools. The program is equipped with sensors that allow you to identify a celestial body within a few seconds by simply pointing your smartphone at it.

Technical specifications

Stellarium mobile is an excellent program that allows you to study the starry sky directly from your smartphone. The developers have created a universal product with incredible technical parameters:

models in various formats realistic star map;
allows you to view stars and sky objects inaccessible to the naked eye;
the program is equipped with sensors that identify an object in the sky within a few seconds;
interface – easy to use;
the software automatically determines the GPS position of the device;
allows direction control using an accelerometer;
has a huge database of celestial bodies (more than 600,000 stars);
an illustrated card index of nebulae and galaxies is built into the software structure;
the application has access to updated information about the movement of asteroids
capable of creating a model of our galaxy;
allows the user to enjoy realistic sunrise and sunset scenes;
The program is equipped with a night mode.

Stellarium for Android phones is an indispensable software for people who want to admire the beautiful night sky.

Program design

The application on Android has incredible realism. The owner of the smartphone will be able to view the sky in three dimensions. It appears as if the user is using a telescope.
The first impression of using the application will be amazing, because the ability to zoom the sky is almost unlimited. Special sensors and sensors determine the location of the device and indicate the most suitable positions for obtaining an excellent image.
Among other things, the software is equipped with a time of day sensor, which will allow you to admire the sky in real time.
All processes in the application are beautifully and carefully drawn. Almost all actions are accompanied by animation.
Extended catalogs allow you to receive reliable information about various objects Universe. The constellation display feature helps you explore diverse star clusters across vast distances. The improved star map is constantly updated, providing the smartphone owner with only verified and accurate information.

Where to download stellarium for Android?

The application can be downloaded on our website. By choosing our electronic resource, the user will receive the product High Quality, tested to be free of malware.
It will also protect yourself from unnecessary spam, which so often haunts free applications.

The image of a person staring at a small screen and not noticing anything that is happening around is a common illustration of a typical smartphone and tablet user. However, in fact, these mobile devices can not only tear a person away from reality, but also, on the contrary, open up new ones. interesting facets. Today we want to introduce you to a series of Android applications that will open your eyes to the stars.

Planetarium

This application gives you basic information about the main astronomical objects such as constellations, planets solar system, their satellites and so on. You can find out detailed data about their properties, location, visibility depending on the observer’s position, date, time and time zone. The application has Beautiful design and a well-designed interface.

Vortex Planetarium – Astronomy

One of the most complete planetariums in Google store Play. Allows you to see the starry sky without leaving the comfort of your living room. Using a camera lens and special augmented reality technology, you can superimpose an image of the night sky directly onto the environment around you. This feature is not available in any other similar application.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A simple program that automatically downloads and sets new wallpapers from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day catalog as your desktop picture every day. You can also read Interesting Facts about displayed astronomical objects and phenomena.

Stellarium Mobile Sky Map

This is another fully featured planetarium for your phone that you can use to gain knowledge about the stars. By pointing your device's camera at any astronomical object in the sky, you will receive its full name, picture and location within a few seconds. The app contains data on more than 600,000 stars, real-time sky maps, and 3D visualizations of the solar system's major planets and their moons.

Star Chart

This application is included in the list of the most popular programs in the Education category and set to mobile devices more than ten million people. Star Chart is a virtual planetarium right in your pocket. It uses location technology with using GPS, a 3D model of the universe that computes in real time current location every star and planet visible from Earth. If you want to find out the name and information about any speck in the sky, just point your device's camera at it.

The image of a person staring at a small screen and not noticing anything that is happening around is a common illustration of a typical smartphone and tablet user. However, in fact, these mobile devices can not only take a person away from reality, but also, on the contrary, open up new interesting facets of it. Today we want to introduce you to a series of Android applications that will open your eyes to the stars.

Planetarium

This application gives you basic information about the main astronomical objects such as constellations, planets of the solar system, their satellites and so on. You can find out detailed data about their properties, location, visibility depending on the observer’s position, date, time and time zone. The application has a beautiful design and a well-developed interface.

Vortex Planetarium – Astronomy

One of the most complete planetariums in the store Google Play. Allows you to see the starry sky without leaving the comfort of your living room. Using a camera lens and special augmented reality technology, you can superimpose an image of the night sky directly onto the environment around you. This feature is not available in any other similar application.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

A simple program that automatically downloads and sets new wallpapers from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day catalog as your desktop picture every day. You can also read interesting facts about the astronomical objects and phenomena displayed.

Stellarium Mobile Sky Map

Star Chart

This application is included in the list of the most popular programs in the Education category and is installed on mobile devices by more than ten million people. Star Chart brings a virtual planetarium right to your pocket. It uses GPS location technology, a 3D model of the universe that calculates in real time the current location of every star and planet visible from Earth. If you want to find out the name and information about any speck in the sky, just point your device's camera at it.

(review of astronomical programs for smartphones on Android OS)

Today you won’t surprise anyone with a smartphone phone, and every day there are more and more owners of such devices. Manufacturers are even convinced that by the end of this year the majority of users mobile communications will be equipped with such devices. Probably of all mobiles operating systems, the most accessible are “Android”. This OS contains both many disadvantages and advantages. The owners of such phones have probably already identified all the negative features, so we won’t mention them. Among the advantages is the variety of applications, the so-called app. They can be downloaded through Google Play, which offers hundreds of thousands of different applications and games for Android devices. There are so many applications and programs that you can simply get confused from such a variety. There are already dozens of programs that are useful for astronomy enthusiasts. What to choose among this variety?
The undisputed leaders are (alas, paid) Mobile Observatory and SkySafary. In fact, these programs can replace almost everything.
Mobile Observatory This is a kind of astronomical planetarium-calendar. Very convenient, with a nice interface. Versions 1.9 and higher, unlike previous ones, are now functional on almost all devices.
What can he do?

— An interactive plan of the Solar System (top view) shows the actual position of all planets, asteroids and comets.
— Live mode(a device for positioning in the sky and receiving information about what you are watching)
— Calendar shows detailed descriptions celestial phenomena for a month.
— Sunrise, sunset culmination for any object
— Position of any object in the sky
— Detailed ephemeris, visibility for all objects.
- Twilight, length of day.
— Catalog of bright stars (~ 9000 stars) with detailed information about every star.
— Messier catalog (110 objects) complete with images.
— Caldwell Catalog (110 objects) complete with images.
— Meteor showers (start, maximum, hour, ...)
— Information about Lunar and Solar eclipses
— Bright comets (automatically selected depending on the date)
— Bright asteroids (5000 in total in the database)
— Moon phases, obviously the appearance of the Sun and planets
- Current image of the sun and sunspot number - (internet connection required)
— Dates of conjunctions of the luminary with the planet or Moon
— positions of the Galilean satellites of Jupiter and a diagram for several days.
— Animated 3D view of the Moon and planets
- Widget with sunrise and sunset - (starting with version 1.96.3, the author finally fixed the display error in other time zones).
— Automatic detection places from mobile phone or GPS
— Select places from the built-in database of 20,000 cities (or online via Google Maps)
- accurate calculations for dates between 1900 and 2100
In general, you can easily buy it for 42.28 UAH. It’s worth it, but for those who don’t want or can’t, search can help.

SkySafary it's a monster of mobile astronomy. It can be compared not even with Stellarium, but rather with Starry night. In any case, in terms of price - version 3 costs as much as 323.12 UAH. But he paints the sky with its luminaries very beautifully.
There are three versions SkySafary.
SkySafari, SkySafary Plus and SkySafary Pro.
Plus And Pro versions can even control telescopes via WI-FI!
SkySafari Accurately shows objects from any point on Earth, at any time up to a hundred years into the past or future. The planetarium includes encyclopedic descriptions of constellations, stars and planets written by professional astronomers. Contains hundreds and thousands of images from NASA missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and everything in the world of astrophotography.

SkySafari Pro has the largest database among other astronomy mobile astronomy apps. The planetarium is half a gigabyte in size, and contains more than 15,300,000 stars from the Hubble Guide Star catalog, as well as 740,000 galaxies up to 18th magnitude, and more than 580,000 solar system objects - including every comet and asteroid ever discovered.

SkySafari 3 Pro includes NASA's latest LRO Moon map, with 8x resolution.
The only thing I didn’t like was the depiction of the figures of the Constellations, as in Stelarium, a sort of flat modernism. But this is not for everyone. The database there is huge. In fact, almost all the necessary astronomy is in your pocket. Sorry, only in English. Although it is written briefly and essentially understandable even to a schoolchild. I must warn you that before installation full version, free place the card should have 1GB. After installing the program, the database can only be downloaded via WI-FI, then it is installed on the card.
One more thing, version 1.1.2. It flies on my 800 MHz processor, despite the fact that the developers consider 1 GHz to be the minimum. I think the video accelerator is more important here + that rare case when the software is written correctly, and by hand.

Very useful app and the widget turned out to be SunDroid. Moon phases, sunrise and sunset and planets, twilight, as well as a widget for the moments of sunrise and sunset of the Sun and Moon. There are paid and free versions.

For Moon observers, a paid one may be suitable LunarMap HD(after installing it, it will be possible to download several textures, both visible and reverse hemispheres)

For Mars observers there is Physical Mars, but unfortunately it costs money.

Helps with eclipse calculations Eclipse Calculator

Convenient applications for calculating telescope characteristics Telescope Calculator And Telescope calculator will help in determining resolution, increasing penetrating power and other parameters of your pet.

Will be useful for astrophotography Astrophoto Calculator It has practically no functions, but it will show the field size and minimum shutter speed depending on the focal length of the lens and pixel size.

Simulation programs

Mobile devices like desktop computers equipped with simulators.
Solar System Explorer Cool program, resembles Celestia but is only limited by the size of the solar system and a small database. Main disadvantage: incorrect display Jupiter and Saturn look like spheroids. This is incomprehensible, because the author managed to accurately depict the irregular shape of Phobos, Deimos and Vesta.
Another application of the author Solar System Explorer Ulysse Gizmos-it's four in one.
Compass(magnetic and true + azimuth),
level gauge(bubble level roll and tilt),
magnetometer
and information from satellites GPS

The information is current and updated in February 2013

Prepared by A.Angelsky

Summer vacation time is a time for travel, relaxation from everyday work and practicing your favorite hobbies. Astronomy is one of the few hobbies that today you can indulge in, not just looking through a telescope or sitting in a planetarium. Modern technologies allow you to satisfy your passion for studying the starry sky from almost anywhere on the planet and absolutely at any time. All you need for this is a smartphone or tablet with iOS control or Android.

Here are five free mobile applications with which you can learn a lot about the stars, planets and other objects of our Universe. In addition, you can stay up to date with the latest scientific discoveries in the field of astronomy, which, unfortunately, are very rarely reported in modern media. Three of them provide for a very significant expansion of capabilities due to in-app purchases, but even with basic functionality they will be of interest to all fans.

1. "Planets"

The main function of Star & Planet Finder is to search for the location in the sky of a given planet, star, constellation or satellite: you can select them from the list, after which, by changing the position of your smartphone or tablet in space, you can determine where they are located relative to you.

IN free version Star & Planet Finder shows only the location of the planets of the solar system and the Moon, and for demonstrating stars, constellations and satellites you will have to pay 33 rubles for each group of objects.

4.Star Chart

One of the most popular free astronomy applications (more than 12 million downloads) is Star Chart, that is, “Atlas of the Starry Sky,” and this is the only program in our review that is available simultaneously in versions for iOS and Android.

Star Chart also uses augmented reality technology and shows you a three-dimensional simulation of the starry sky in relation to the place from where you are observing and where you point the lens of your smartphone or tablet. That is, unlike most other similar applications, daylight and surrounding objects do not prevent you from seeing constellations hidden from the naked eye.

The program catalog contains detailed 3D images planets of our solar system, data on all 88 constellations with luxurious illustrations from the atlas of the 16th century Polish astronomer Jan Hevelius “Uranography”. Included in the application full catalog 110 exotic astronomical objects of the 17th century French astronomer Charles Messier, including various galaxies, nebulae and star clusters. Finally, the Star Chart database contains all the visible stars of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, numbering more than 120 thousand units.

Among the unusual features of Star Chart, noteworthy is the ability to go back in time 10,000 years ago and see how the starry sky looked in that distant era. To access the time shift function, you need to click on current time, year or date to the right top corner applications: a slider will appear on the screen, by moving which you can quickly return to the desired date. You can return to the present time by clicking on the word “Now” in the left corner of the screen. You can travel to the future in a similar way. If you want to find a specific event, it is better to use the calendar of eclipses, moon phases and other important dates.

The program has truly excellent graphics and a lot of detailed information about various astronomical objects. For a fee (from 66 to 329 rubles) you can get access to extended data packages about stars, comets, satellites, nebulae and meteor showers.

5. Astronomy Picture of the Day

The Astronomy Picture of the Day app for iPhone and iPad was developed in collaboration with the American space agency NASA and uses a variety of stunning photographs high resolution, obtained during space exploration.

Astronomy Picture of the Day is essentially just a client for a giant NASA photo album available on the Internet. All photos are provided with brief annotations; you can search for images by date or jump to a random image. And although this is not an application application, we decided to include it in our review, since a true astronomy lover would never refuse to admire such unique species the world around us.