Redshift has been around for ages on desktop machines, and is now available for your iThing. First impressions are good, with plenty of options available and the display easily configurable. It has a decent night mode and can be set up with a semi-transparent horizon like SkySafari which I find very useful. It utilises full accelerometer and compass functions as well.
AU$12.99
Below are screenshots directly from my iPad.
Blurb from App Store:
Quote:
THE AWARD-WINNING PLANETARIUM SOFTWARE REDSHIFT IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR IPHONE, IPOD TOUCH AND IPAD!
Redshift brings the night sky to your desktop, with all major and dwarf planets, constellations and bright stars – displayed in top quality. The application goes beyond the basic planetarium because it also displays a 3D-model of the nearby part of our Galaxy.
Perform various amazing 3-D flights and visit the Moon and all planets in our Solar system. Detailed surface maps display those objects in a close-up right before your eyes. Once you have arrived at your target object, you can enter into an orbit around the celestial body – just like an astronaut in a real spacecraft.
Or choose the most thrilling option of all: Travel to the stars in the depth of the Galaxy, some of which are up to 3,000 light years away from our home planet!
Find selected objects in the sky: By using the position sensors and the compass (3GS or higher), you can reach every celestial body. Turn on the „Follow Sky“ mode of your device to identify stars and planets that shine in the real night sky in front of you.
Thrilling images present around 500 galaxies, nebulae, star clusters and other Deep Sky objects on your screen – images otherwise available only through the largest telescopes in observatories worldwide.
Every calculation within the application is done in real time for any given epoch in the 20th and 21st centuries, such as positions of stars and planets, the motion of Earth and the Moon, or flybys of comets. You can easily accelerate or slow down the progress of time by a wheel to watch the thrilling events in the night sky in full detail.
Improved performance and stability under iOS4.1 in Update 1.0.1
Features:
- More than 100,000 stars, 500 fascinating Deep Sky objects, 30 biggest asteroids, 10 famous comets visiting our planet, all major and dwarf planets, as well as Earth’s Moon
- Comprehensive astronomical data for all celestial objects: name (as referred to in various catalogues), distance, type, luminosity, size, rise and set times
- Integrated display of information gathered from Wikipedia
- “Follow Sky“ mode: watch the current sky view and immediately identify a bright star or planet in front of you
- Breathtaking 3-D flights to the Moon, planets and stars
- “Observatory“ option: presents you many fascinating objects shining on the Earth’s sky
- “Day/Night” mode and realistic simulation of dawn
- “Night Vision” mode for observations during the night
- „Time travel“: Create night sky views for any location at any time in the past or in the future
- Location: Choose automatic search via GPS or select manually on the Earth’s globe
- Select from several background sound effects
- Select panoramic views as your individual horizon
I think that it depends what you want it for Jeff. If you need to search for objects and control your goto scope directly then I much prefer SkySafari. It will talk to most scope controllers via SkyFi over WiFi OR via a serial RS232 cable called SkyWire. This is killer in my book.
If you wish to plan a session and find out what is available at a given time during the night then Starmap Pro wins out. Starmap incorporates some complex options to allow for your particular optics, as does SkySafari in the way it will simulate your CCD camera's field of view - including rotation. Nice.
The main problem with Starmap is its poorly designed interface, with far too many options in a mobile application. As a desktop app it'd be fine, and as a human interface designer I'd be making it much simpler to use. Complex isn't good - its interfering. SkySafari will sport similar planning capabilities soon I believe, and then it will in my opinion overtake Starmap Pro for the serious user.
I also really like Starwalk and pUniverse (Pocket Universe). They're both excellent and simple apps to show in a public night setting, and are more designed to look fantastic to a noob than be useful to the astronomer.
I have a dob with Argo, so it would be more for basic planning and showing the kids stuff, though it sounds like Star Map Pro may get a little annoying
Chris, it's just a bit unusual to be able
to zoom in on a planet independent of
the background sky.
Here it looks like a close up of Saturn
superimposed on a wide field background.
Is this just the way Redshift works?
I think it's supposed to be a 3d solar system type arrangement. As in when you zoom in on a planet it takes you on a little virtual journey to it. The point of view is no longer Earth based. The stars being distant don't change much.
Golly. LOL. Yes, it's a fly-to feature that lets you inspect the planet at close range. Nothing nefarious or misleading about it. All of the major applications do it these days.
I've been playing around with Redshift the last few days. It's very nice to use, very easy. I have been surprised it hasn't had a few NGC's that I've searched for - perhaps I'm doing something wrong, as I don't see why they wouldn't include all NGC's.
- most of NGC's included + noticable objects from PGC (~70000), new images of well-known deepskies
- significantly improved search
- improved filters for stars/deepsky objects/labels
- TV/VGA-out with adjustable aspect ratio & labels' size
v1.1 doesn't work properly on devices with locale other than en/de/fr/es/ru. v1.1.1 fixes this.
I've been using the update for a little while, since my iPad notified me of it. It's a great improvement!
I have really enjoyed the control over the labels and the extra objects in the database. I instantly noticed both of those improvements.
I used it the other night to find M104 on a manually controled C14 and was impressed with the night vision red screen too.
I'm not sure if it's a setting I've changed, but I've noticed that when I come back to RedShift from using another app or from the iPad going to sleep I need to click the time icon to kick it on to the current time. I can see good and bad in this so don't have a problem with it, but I think it's different behaviour to before. It caught me out a few times initially when I didn't realise it hadn't updated to current time.
I'm not sure if it's a setting I've changed, but I've noticed that when I come back to RedShift from using another app or from the iPad going to sleep I need to click the time icon to kick it on to the current time. I can see good and bad in this so don't have a problem with it, but I think it's different behaviour to before. It caught me out a few times initially when I didn't realise it hadn't updated to current time.
It's definitely bug. Will be fixed in next update.
- 3D-flight to asteroids. The real shapes (models from NASA JPL) are accessible in Tools->3d-flight->Asteroids menu.
- Eclipse shadows are rendered now for Earth and Moon
- New localizations: italian, dutch, portuguese. Ability to switch language on the fly independent of iOS locale.
- Some interface enhancements: Find/Cities/Timezones lists are opened in popover windows (iPad); more graphics in retina quality (iPhone4/iPod4)
