Astronomy Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

This weekend's Lyrid meteor shower: Four iOS apps that can help you watch it

by Mel Martin (Apr 19th, 2013)

If you're a meteor maven or stargazer, this is the weekend for one of the year's best meteor showers, the Lyrids. The Lyrids come to maximum strength April 21-22, which for those of us in North America means late Sunday night and early Monday morning. The shower is caused by the Earth passing ...

Satellite Safari gives you a unique vantage point for what is in orbit

by Mel Martin (Mar 24th, 2013)

Satellite Safari is a new iOS app from the creators of Sky Safari. Rather than look at the universe, Satellite Safari has more local ambitions. The app contains a complete database of what is orbiting the earth. It allows you to find what is overhead, then view the spacecraft from earth, from ...

Check out tomorrow's asteroid close call on your iPhone or iPad

by Mel Martin (Feb 14th, 2013)

As you may have read, our home planet will have a close call tomorrow, February 15, with a 180,000-ton asteroid called 2012 DA14. There is no chance of a collision, but the space rock will come within 17,200 miles, closer than many of our communication satellites. You can follow the approach ...

NASA offers free e-book for iPad owners

by Mel Martin (Dec 22nd, 2012)

What a nice holiday gift from NASA: it's an interactive e-book available in the iBookstore called Hubble Space Telescope: Discoveries, featuring beautiful images, video and animations relating to the space telescope that is giving us striking new views of the universe we live in. "These new ...

Cassini HD for the iPad lets you take a free trip to Saturn today

by Mel Martin (Sep 15th, 2012)

I continue to praise the variety of Astronomy apps that are available for iOS. Today, I call your attention to Cassini HD for the iPad, which is usually US $1.99, but is free today only. The app collects more than 800 striking images from the NASA Cassini Mission that did a close flyby of Saturn ...

Star Walk adds realistic sunsets and enhanced galleries

by Mel Martin (Aug 29th, 2012)

As iOS astronomy apps go, Star Walk is certainly at the top for graphics and depth of features. We've reviewed it favorably in the past. Version 6.0 today adds realistic sunset and sunrise effects, a completely new info window, and a new and improved gallery of astronomy images. The company ...

TUAW and MacTech interview: Southern Stars

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jul 20th, 2012)

Southern Stars makes a host of awesome astronomy tools, like SkySafari and assorted controllers. If you're serious about astronomy give them a look. In this video, Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine) interviews Tim DeBenedictis of Southern Stars at WWDC 2012. Tim was kind enough ...

If you're going to check out the Venus transit try to capture it with your iPhone

by Mel Martin (Jun 1st, 2012)

On Tuesday, Venus will pass in front of the sun for the last time until 2117. Southern Stars Group, LLC, makers of SkySafari for iOS wants people to use their iPhone or iPad cameras to capture the transit and have a chance to win an iPad, iPod touch, or a Samsung Galaxy tablet (which most of ...

Star Walk and Solar Walk updated for the new iPad Retina display

by Mel Martin (Mar 16th, 2012)

The highly rated astronomy iPad apps from Vito Technology have updates that allow them to display the heavens and our solar system in dazzling high definition for owners of the new iPad. Star Walk (US $4.99) is a fully animated guide to the night sky with a database of more than 20,000 objects. ...

Daily Mac App: Saturn

by Mel Martin (Jan 31st, 2012)

I've just spent a pleasant hour exploring Saturn, which is free for a short time in the Mac App Store. The GUI is based on LCARS (Library Computer Access/Retrieval System) featured on some of the Star Trek shows and films. The app has a massive amount of data, and it's more than 1 GB to download. ...

Daily iPhone App: Pocket Universe

by Mel Martin (Jan 25th, 2012)

Pocket Universe has been one of my favorite astronomy apps for the iPhone. Take it outside to easily identify what's up using the charts and the built-in augmented reality features. With an update that hit the app store yesterday, you can now talk to Pocket Universe, using Siri speech recognition ...

Daily iPhone App: SkySafari

by Kelly Hodgkins (Dec 27th, 2011)

SkySafari from Southern Stars is an app for the astronomy enthusiast with an iPhone. It's the perfect companion for a new telescope owner, who can use the app to help locate celestial bodies in the sky, or the casual observer who wants to know the name of that bright star cluster overhead. It's ...

Daily iPad App: Solar Walk

by Mel Martin (Sep 2nd, 2011)

Want to tour the Solar System? Solar Walk is a just-updated universal iOS app that allows you to do just that. The new version has support for 3D, so you get some rather stunning renditions of planets and satellites that are more realistic than what's available in a 2D presentation. I reviewed ...

OS X Lion wallpaper missing a few astronomical bodies

by Mike Schramm (Aug 12th, 2011)

Just like the default iPad wallpaper comes from a real lake called Pyramid Lake (which is supposed to be in Nevada, though I'm sure I pass signs for it every time I drive up to San Fran from here in LA), so too is the default Lion wallpaper based on a real picture of a real galaxy, specifically ...

WWDC Interview: Southern Stars

by Victor Agreda, Jr. (Jun 22nd, 2011)

Southern Stars made the first RS-232 dock connector interface, which we saw at MacTech last year, but they also make a really awesome stargazing app called SkySafari. I sat down with Tim DeBenedictis of Southern Stars to talk about their apps, the cable and how WWDC announcements will affect ...