Skip to Content

Take a planetary tour with Solar Walk

by Mel Martin May 21st 2010 at 7:00PM

Solar Walk is a nifty astronomy romp from the folks who did the popular Star Walk iPhone and iPad app. Instead of exploring the night sky and deep space, you get to tour our solar system in luscious 3D graphics. While the app is universal for the iPhone and iPad, the iPad version is breathtaking with crisp graphics and beautiful color.

Tapping on any planet will take you close to it, and you can use your finger to orbit the planet and see it from any angle or zoom. You can see the planets on any particular date and time, and speed up the animation to watch the planets in their elliptical orbits.

Tapping the info button gets you some information on all the planets, like size, gravity, composition and more. One omission is that the program doesn't tell you which planets are up for viewing on a particular night. You'll need Star Walk for that.

Solar Walk Screens

  • Saturn
  • A small moon
  • Several planets from above

The smooth finger controls combined with the spectacular graphics make this a perfect demo for the iPad. Dragging your finger to fly around the planets is a bit intoxicating, and I'm impressed with the smooth animation.

Complaints? I do have a couple. As mentioned, the app should tell the user what planets are visible in the night sky. I found the textual information thin. Just playing with the app will raise a lot of questions about the planets and the way the solar system works -- I wanted to read more, and I expect many users will agree. I hope the developers will put a lot more info into this program. Some old timers will be mad that Pluto isn't part of the program, but of course Pluto lost planet status in 2006, and is now classified as a 'dwarf' planet.

Future versions of Solar Walk are expected to have 3D views that work with red/blue 3D glasses. Asteroids will be added, as well as the International Space Station.

This is a great app for the space enthusiast. It works great for kids or adults, and I'm looking forward to where this app goes in future updates. As it is now, it's very entertaining and informative, with jaw dropping graphics.

Solar Walk is U.S. $2.99. It works on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, and requires OS 3.1.3.



View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

iPad

Solar Walk is a nifty astronomy romp from the folks who did the popular Star Walk iPhone and iPad app. Instead of exploring the night sky...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

6 Comments

Filter by:
Racheal Africa

I love the ipad because of its beautiful graphics.Solar walk is such an exciting activity and i sons love watching it.Thanks for the blog.Africa safari

August 16 2010 at 8:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom

Beautiful app. I'm a space geek myself and really enjoyed this, but more importantly, my 4 year old daughter fell in love with it. I made the mistake of downloading this about 15 minutes before her bedtime and it was very hard to tear her away from it that night. She was fascinated.

May 24 2010 at 5:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Laurel Kornfeld

Please add Pluto back to Solar Walk. The claim that "Pluto lost planet status" represents only one side in an ongoing debate, not reality. Only four percent of the IAU voted on this, and most are not planetary scientists. Their decision was immediately opposed in a formal petition by hundreds of professional astronomers led by Dr. Alan Stern, Principal Investigator of NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. Stern and like-minded scientists favor a broader planet definition that includes any non-self-luminous spheroidal body in orbit around a star. The spherical part is important because objects become spherical when they attain a state known as hydrostatic equilibrium, meaning they are large enough for their own gravity to pull them into a round shape. This is a characteristic of planets and not of shapeless asteroids and Kuiper Belt Objects. Pluto meets this criterion and is therefore a planet. Under this definition, our solar system has 13 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris.

I will not buy this and urge as many people as possible not to buy it until Pluto is added back in. Portraying one side of a debate as "truth" is a disservice to the public.

May 24 2010 at 1:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
NetMage

The iPad only app called "The Elements"

Google is your friend.

May 23 2010 at 1:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
milkmage

these are no brainers, even if you aren't interested in astronomy.

along with "the elements" - 2 of these are usually all it takes to make the "but it's just a big ipod" crowd stop and think for a second.

not sure about star walk, but solar walk is a hybrid app - looks great on the phone too.

make sure you explore the settings - the night vision mode and brightness for visible stars are handy (i live in a place with lots of light pollution)

for $10, you can grab the soundtrack in itunes too.

May 21 2010 at 9:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to milkmage's comment
Aaron

Out of curiosity, exactly which app are you referring to as "the elements" ?? I'd like to check it out.

May 23 2010 at 5:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.