APODViewerHD Review

Each day NASA releases its Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) accompanied by a description of the picture by an astronomer. Normally the site releases some awesome pictures. APODViewerHD is an app dedicated to presenting and organizing the APOD and past APODs in an easy to use interace.

All of the functionality and features of the website are part of the app. For example, the images on the APOD website are zoomable, as are the pictures on the app. Pinching to zoom is a much more fulfilling experience than the magnifying glass on the web. The app also boasts some cool features like the ability to download a high resolution image. I’m always a big fan of offline features so I was excited to learn that once an image for a particular day has been viewed, the image is cached to be viewed offline. The cache can hold 10 GB of pictures! It can also be easily cleared to free up space on the iPad.

The calendar feature was by far my favorite feature. Tapping the calendar in the top left corner brings up a calendar with thumbnails of each day’s APOD. It’s easily navigable. Going back quite a distance can be done by holding the left arrow key. I’d like the ability to navigate to a specific date though.

Other features include push notifications to notify exactly when a new APOD is available, sharing the APOD through email, saving the image with the text in PDF format, and viewing a random APOD. I particularly like the random picture feature. Like StumbleUpon, I can see myself hitting the random (Stumble) button for long periods of time just browsing through pictures.

For only $1.99, APODViewerHD is the best way I know of to view the APOD and past APODs on the iPad. An iPhone version also exists.
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