iPhone astronomy program.

[Amunous]

hey all,

if there are any beginners out there that have an iPhone and are sick of looking at star charts trying to work out what to point their scope at. I highly recommend getting a program for your iPhone or iPad called "star walk" its a realtime projection of what your looking at with your phone, you just point the phone at the sky and it shows you what the stars are behind it, you can search for objects and it points you in the direction of them, lets you know moon phases and when the planets pop up above the horizon.


Latest additions:
The main new feature of this update is Augmented Reality for the new gen iPod Touch that allows users to point-and-display the sky as on any device with digital compass. The same mechanism helps calibrate iPhone 4 compass to eliminate error margin completely. Version 5.0 also features real time satellite tracking and TelRad for pro astronomers, ability to connect a secondary display along with new content additions and minor bug fixes.
SATELLITES - find out where exactly the ISS is right now! (and over 150 satellites more)
AUGMENTED REALITY for new iPod Touch - So you don’t have a digital compass in your new gen iPod Touch, but you can now enjoy Star Walk augmented reality anyway! (see Help for how-to instructions)
Superior PRECISION for iPhone: calibrate your compass by matching Star Walk sky with the view acquired from your camera.
TELRAD: advanced feature to help you measure angular distance between nearby stars. Can be turned on/off in Settings menu.
BIG SCREEN - connect a second display to your iPad and view the sky on it!
New General Catalogue added (this means MORE deep sky objects, galaxies and nebulae!)
New constellations’ pictures.
Share your Bookmarks on Facebook!
Sharing Picture of the Day via Twitter bug fixed.
Main Features:

Gyro support, Arrow Guides
Star Spotter Function (for devices with Digital Compass)
Time machine
Moon phases
Night mode
3D Earth View for manual selection of location
Deep sky objects (Messier) and Meteor showers
Wikipedia links
Multitasking

ive only just purchased this and ill never use a star chart again.

oh and it has a night vision red screen so you can preserve your night vision.

[Omaroo]

Hi Michael - welcome to iDevice astronomy :)

Yes, I have and like Star Walk as it's better suited to people on our public astronomy evenings than most of the others. It runs a slick display and the graphics are nicely done. It doesn't have any where near the power or number of catalogue objects of either Sky Safari or StarMap, but at the price is a real bargain. :thumbsup: I run it on my iPhone, but I don't think that there is an iPad HD version yet, which is a pity. The augmented reality feature doesn't really work which is also a pity - at least on my iPhone 3GS. For some reason as soon as it's dark, the software complains that it's too dark to image the sky and star pattern - which defeats the purpose somewhat. It kinda works around dusk, but not for long.

[Amunous]

really, i havent had an issue with it. but im using the iPhone 4. still a very handy peice of software for getting started.

[Omaroo]

Yes, I think that the iPhone 4's camera is more sensitive than the 3GS's - about the same step up as the 3GS was over the older 3G.

[vespine]

i've had star walk for a couple of months now and i have to say i love it! Absolutely brilliant, After using it for about a week when i worked out that all those random looking stars moving around on the screen were satellites I nearly had to pick up my jaw off the floor! Amazing, it's like heavens above and argo navis on your iphone.. ok obviously argo navis is a lot more precise and has a much bigger catalogue, but for about $4 i'm not complaining.

[Swanssm]

Starwalk is great.....If anyone is interested I have a contact there and they WILL publish high quality amateur astrophotos in their photo of the day section.

Message me offline if you are interested. They have published two of my photos previously and I got a couple of hundred hits on my blog as a result. (but.....No they don't pay for photos).