Tag: astronomy
Daily Update for May 28, 2013
It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires ...
Photographing the moon with an iPhone
Stargazers and amateur astronomers might be shocked to hear that, with the right equipment, the iPhone makes a perfect camera to photograph the moon. Writing on his 23x blog, Jared Earle reveals the surprising, simple steps he takes to get amazing shots of the moon. To start with, you need some ...
This weekend's Lyrid meteor shower: Four iOS apps that can help you watch it
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 ...