SkyGazer

Release 1.6.2 - Now with iPad support!

For the iPhone and iPod Touch

SkyGazer is an easy-to-use iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch planetarium program designed for beginners in astronomy. It's the intro version of SkyVoyager, our advanced iPhone astronomy software.

SkyGazer shows you 120,000 stars, and the 220 best-known star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies in the sky. It displays all the major planets and moons of the Solar System using NASA spacecraft imagery, and includes a database of several dozen asteroids, comets, and artificial satellites.

SkyGazer accurately shows you the sky from any location on Earth, at any time up to 100 years in the past or future. SkyGazer also includes informative descriptions of the constellations, stars, and planets. It contains hundreds of images from NASA space missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and from the world's foremost astro-photographers.

• Compass & Accelerometer - If you have an iPhone 3G S with a compass, SkyGazer can show you the sky in same the direction that you're holding your phone. Shake the phone to activate its compass and accelerometer - now you can identify stars and planets by holding your phone next to them! You can find any object in the sky by following an arrow that SkyGazer points in its direction. If you have an older iPhone or iPod Touch, SkyGazer supports the accelerometer built into your device as well. Tilting the phone now shows you the sky at the same angle that you're holding your phone.

• Night Vision Theme - SkyGazer contains interface themes let you change the look-and-feel of the app. In addition to the "Classic" look, there's now a cool black "Onyx" theme, and a much-improved "Night Vision" theme that preserves your dark adaption as you're exploring the night sky.

• Time Flow Animation - The Time Flow feature lets you animate the night sky over periods from seconds to years, using simple VCR controls accessible from the main sky chart view. Follow the diurnal motion of the Sun, Moon, and stars over a single night. See Jupiter's moons revolve around the giant planet. Watch the planets pass through the constellations as they (and we!) orbit the Sun. View binary stars wheeling around each other over many years, compressed into a few seconds.

• Descriptions and Images - SkyGazer includes more than 500 informative, plain-English descriptions of the constellations, planets, moons, stars, and deep sky objects. It contains hundreds of images from NASA space missions, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the world's foremost amateur and professional astro-photographers. Unlike other astronomy apps, which just give you Wikipedia links, our object descriptions are carefully researched and fact-checked - and you can use them anywhere, without needing internet access.

SkyGazer's simple user interface makes it an invaluable tool for exploring the night sky.

SkyVoyager - The Pro Version

For advanced users, Carina Software also offers SkyVoyager. SkyVoyager contains a much larger database of 312,000 stars and 31,900 deep sky objects. If you have a computer-controlled GoTo telescope, SkyVoyager can use your iPhone or iPod's built-in WiFi to point your telescope in the sky.

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Overview

SkyGazer is exclusively available through the iTunes App Store, and runs on the iPhone, iPad, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3G S, and iPod Touch.

The download price is $2.99 (USD), and the download size is 21 MB. Here's what SkyGazer includes:

• 1 Sun
• 9 Planets (counting Pluto!)
• 22 Moons
• 88 Constellations
• 20 Comets
• 20 Asteroids
• 218 Star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies
• 1,418 City locations
• 120,162 Stars

Educational Content

SkyGazer doesn't just contain facts, figures, and graphics. It's also an educational astronomy field reference, including:

• 37 Planet and Moon Descriptions
• 51 Constellation Prints
• 65 Reference Diagrams
• 88 Constellation Guides
• 176 Deep Sky Object Images
• 131 Solar System Images
• 224 Deep Sky Object Descriptions
• 205 Star Descriptions

The app includes extensive on-line help, and an introduction to the basic concepts of amateur astronomy. SkyGazer is perfect for camping trips or other occasions where you want to learn about the night sky - but didn't bring the laptop (or the internet!) along.

iPad Support

SkyGazer is now a "universal" app that runs natively on the iPad, as well as the iPhone and iPod Touch. It works almost identically on both devices. In a few places, the user interface has been rearranged to fit the larger iPad screen, but the app's features and functionality remain unchanged.

Here are a few screen shots of SkyGazer running on the iPad. You may need to make your browser window wider to see them completely:

What's New in Release 1.6.2

The latest release of SkyGazer is 1.6.2, released on 1 June 2010. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. Solar System settings are now saved properly.
2. Updated Constellation and Messier object descriptions. A few corrections to stellar and deep sky object data.

What's New in Release 1.6.1

SkyGazer 1.6.1 was released on 11 May 2010. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. iPad support! SkyGazer is now a "universal" app which runs natively on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and now the iPad! Settings appear in a "split view" on the iPad. The rest of the app works the same on the iPad as on the iPhone and iPod Touch, but uses the full resolution of the iPad screen.
2. Compass readings on the iPhone 3GS are now averaged, for much smoother compass action. The compass "flip" problem that occurs when holding the phone in portrait orientation near 45 degrees over your head has been corrected.
3. We've made improvements to the Night Vision theme: a red "filter" is placed over the keyboard after it appears, and a white flash when first displaying Help screens has been corrected. A few other minor Night Vision display problems have been fixed.
4. A software rotation lock in the Appearance settings lets you prevent the app from switching to landscape mode, if you so desire. This is independent of the iPad's hardware rotation lock.
5. The "Time" icon in the main toolbar has a new look to avoid conflicting with Apple's standard "Recents" icon. On the iPad, the date/time picker now appears inside a popover control to conform to Apple's iPad UI guidelines.
6. A few minor corrections have been made to various object descriptions. On the iPad, images appear in-line with the object description text (except in night vision mode - but you can still click the image links to display the images full screen.)

What's New in Release 1.5

SkyGazer 1.5 was released on 6 April 2010. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. SkyGazer now contains the entire Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars - over 10 times more than the previous version! All those new stars will help you find faint star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies when you're looking for them with binoculars or a small telescope.
2. In the main Search view, for both object lists and search results, objects below the horizon are displayed in a darker color, so that you can quickly tell "what's up" versus what's below the horizon.
3. Asterisms (like the Big Dipper) and their names can now be displayed in gold, to distinguish them from constellation lines, which are shown in purple.
4. After centering an object, then turning on the compass/altimeter (either by shaking the iPhone/iPod Touch, or from Settings) the chart now follows the compass/altimeter, instead of remaining locked on the centered object.
5. In the Object Info view for the Moon, SkyGazer now displays the date and time of the next moon phase event after the current date. in the Object Info view for stars, radial velocities are now displayed correctly - previously they were too small by factor of 3.26.

What's New in Release 1.4

SkyGazer is 1.4 was released on 15 February 2010. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. To activate the compass and/or accelerometer, shake your iPhone/iPod - one quick shake will do it! Touch the screen to deactivate them. This is much simpler than going to the Settings to activate/deactivate the compass/altimeter - although you can still do it that way if you prefer.
2. New interface "themes" let you change the look-and-feel of the app. In addition to the "Classic" look, there's now a sexy black "Onyx" theme, and a much-improved "Night Vision" theme.
3. The Sun is now drawn with a yellow glow around it. Dawn and Dusk times are now computed correctly, in the Time segment of the Date & Time Settings view.
4. This version adds improved descriptions for about a dozen of the brightest and best-known deep sky objects.
5. ADS, Hipparcos, and Tycho catalog numbers have been added for a large number of double stars which were missing them.

What's New in Release 1.3

SkyGazer is 1.3 was released on 3 December 2009. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. Time flow! You can now change the date and time, either continuously or in single steps, using VCR controls easily accessible from the main sky chart view.
2. Bright nebulae are now shown with contoured outlines. Galaxies are displayed at their correct shape and orientation.
3. The Help view now contains links to various astronomy web sites, and a built-in web browser lets you view them without leaving the app.
4. Binary stars are now shown at their correct separation and position angle, and will orbit each other as years go by, using time flow. Binary star position angles and separations are now correctly reported in the Object Info view.
5. Anti-aliased star drawing places stars more accurately on the screen. Stars now "twinkle" when moving the view or flowing time.
6. A crash when computing moonrise/moonset times on days when moonrise/set does not actually occur has now been fixed.
7. The compass/altimeter are now temporarily disabled when you touch the screen, to allow swiping and zooming. They are re-enabled afterwards.
8. Corrected refraction formulae now provide accurate altitudes for objects near the horizon.
9. Updated descriptions for the Moon and a few bright stars.
10. The location displayed in the status bar sometimes incorrectly reverted to "Austin, TX" in previous versions. This has been fixed.

What's New in Release 1.2

SkyGazer 1.2 was released on 5 August 2009. Here are the new features and bug fixes included in this release:

1. Requires iPhone OS 3.0 or higher.
2. Support for the compass in the iPhone 3G S, and the accelerometer in all iPhone and iPod Touch models. Please Note: for best results with the compass, turn the phone sideways to landscape mode. In portrait mode, when holding the phone at an angle near 45 degrees overhead, the compass becomes "confused". This is a hardware limitation which disappears when the phone is held sideways.
3. Cardinal direction markers are now visible against the daytime horizon when the Natural Sky option is turned on (in the Horizon & Sky view).
4. More than 109 new and updated deep sky object descriptions, and 50 new deep sky object images. Every Caldwell object now has a description. Numerous spelling/grammar errors corrected in all descriptions.
5. Fixed accuracy problems with earth-orbiting satellites. Fixed problem with local horizon coordinates not including the effects of precession.