Tag: Star Rover HD »

Star Rover HD, from developer EEFan, Inc., is a real-time planetarium app for the iPad. The objects on the screen, including the moon, planets and other heavenly bodies, are in exactly the same place as they are in the night sky outside, using the user's location data to make this happen.

The planetarium app boasts over 120,000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue, a high-precision star catalogue published in 1997 that was based on the European Space Agency's satellite in operation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. The other features of this app include all 88 constellations, planets and their moons, our own moon phases, real images of nebulae from the Messier catalogue of 1771, and realistic Milky Way, atmosphere and sunset data.

If that's not enough for the star loving iPad owner, an online User Guide is available. Any fan of the heavens can see the utility of such an app, viewing the night sky with far greater resolution and an overlay of real-time information and data -- far better than squinting through a blurry telescope and consulting a paper book, yeah?

[gallery]

If you've ever caught yourself staring up at the night sky, taking in the billions of stars that softly illuminate the sky, wanting to know more about what you're seeing, then Star Rover HD might be worth checking out for you.

The app offers users accurate and real-time information on the stars. All 88 constellations are included in the app, as well as all of the planets and their moons. The app also features high quality pictures of nebulae. Furthermore, Star Rover HD even uses equatorial and azimuthal grids, giving you coordinates for everything in the sky.

The whole experience is virtual in nature – this is not an augmented reality app. But, graphically, it looks solid. The app automatically identifies your current location and you can use pinch-to-zoom to get a closer look and more information on just about everything in the sky.

Best of all, Star Rover HD is available on the iTunes App Store for free.