Our best teams of designers, astronomers and engineers are developing this new app that will satisfy both professional astrophysics and astrophotographers and the youngest astronomers interested in space. This mobile application is, at the same time, a professional tool to assist in night sky observations and a space science dissemination project.
This project, which will be partially funded by the Spanish Astronomy Society, is currently in alpha-test version. By now, we already have a functional version of the app, but we will keep working on it to include new capabilities and to improve the user experience.
The app is truly designed for any public: its perfect for professionals because it provides useful and precise information, it is adapted to handicap people, kids love it because of the mini-games that approach science in an amusing way and promote collaboration, and it connects with young people through social media, where you can receive alerts and share your results in the games or other interesting facts such as your age or weigh in other planets.
Some of the professional features include:
- Sunset and sunrise hours.
- Astronomical sunrise and astronomical sunset hours.
- Moon phase.
- Moonset and moonrise hours.
- Meteorological and seeing information.
- Geographical coordinates and height determination.
- Polaris position in polar scope.
- Astronomical events (meteor showers, comets, eclipses, planetary or ISS transits… ) notifications.
- Characteristics and ephemeris of Solar System bodies and objects from the Messier, Caldwell, NGC and other catalogues.
- Altitude curves.
- Satellites identification.
- Collaboration between users to create events, notifications…
Our goals, besides providing accurate data to successfully develop astronomy observations, are to approach science to the general public, arouse scientific and technological vocations, increase the awareness of Spanish contributions to science and collaborate with other users and people involved in the science community. Thanks to its simplicity, notifications of important events, a friendly design and integrated games, this app will captivate many users and hopefully reach our highest expectations.
Some of the scientific dissemination tools are:
- Basic knowledge about the night sky.
- Identification of observable objects.
- Immediate notifications of new events.
- Updated Encyclopedia of planets, moons, asteroids, satellites and other Solar System bodies.
- Updated Encyclopedia of the latest missions of the European Space Agency, NASA and other space agencies.
- Educational mini-games.
- 360º navigation through space scenarios.
- Access to relevant videos and images.
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Cover Image © NASA