Requirements: Android 2.1 and up
Overview: Mobile Observatory is the most complete astronomy app on the Android market and the perfect tool for anybody interestered in the sky's wonders, from the occassional sky gazer to the passionate astronomy-amateur.
You want to know if the next lunar eclipse is visible from your location or when the next bright comet is visible? You would like to be notified by your smart phone the next time, Jupiter and the Moon meet in the sky? You want to know what the blazing bright object in the evening sky is? You want to be always up-to-date which celestial events are visible from your location? Then this app is a must have for you!
The app does not only include a live, zoomable sky map telling you what sky object you are looking at but provides you with loads of detailed extra information on stars, planets, deep sky objects, meteor showers, comets, asteroids, lunar and solar eclipses as well as detailed ephemeris of all included sky objects and an interactive top-down view of the Solar System. All that in just one app!
Note: there are compability problems with Android 4.0 and higher. These should be solved for the next version.
Features:
Zoomable sky map showing stars, planets, asteroids, deep sky objects, currently active meteor streams
Interactive top-down view of the Solar System showing the actual positions of all planets, the Moon and asteroids
Live mode (point device on sky and get information on what you see)
Calendar showing detailed descriptions of celestial events for up to the next 31 days
Push celestial events to your phone's calendar and set a reminder alarm
Rise, set, and transit times for any object
Position of any object in the sky (altitude and direction)
Twilight times, length of day
Bright Star Catalog (~9000 stars) with detailed information about each star
Messier Catalog (110 objects) complete with images
Caldwell Catalog (110 objects) complete with images
Meteor streams (begin, maximum, hourly rate, ...)
Lunar and solar eclipses information
Bright comets (automatically selected according to the date)
Bright asteroids (total of 5000 in the database)
Moon phases, the apparent view of the sun and planets
Current image of the Sun and sun spot number
Widget with rise & set times of the Sun and Moon (works only if the app is not copied to the SD card!)
Automatic location determination from the mobile network or GPS
Select a location from a built-in database of 20 000 cities or online via Google Maps
Choose any time and date
Detailed ephemeris, visibility information of all objects
Dates of conjunctions between any object with planets or the Moon (e.g. find the next conjunction of the Pleiades with the Moon)
Animated 3D-view of the Moon and the planets
Accurate calculations for dates between 1900 and 2100
No internet connection is required for the calculations (only for the live-image of the sun). Mobile Observatory uses OpenGL to display the apparent view of the planets and the Moon.
What's in this version:
Version 1.93
- New: Pluto added
- New: Spanish localization
- New: Follow object in Sky View
- Improvement: Additional ephemeris information
- Improvement: Rendering of sky improved
- Improvement: Better precision for position calculation of Solar System objects (VSOP87)
More Info:
