Distant Suns (Lite): Astronomy for the rest of us
By First Light
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Description
Sporting a database of thousands of stars, nebula and galaxies, Distant Suns has earned the reputation of both having one of the most realistic displays of the night sky, while being one of the easiest to use astronomy programs available for the most casual sky watcher and serious telescope jockey alike.
Features include:
•Best tech support in this and parallel universes
•Thousands of pinpoint stars scintillating like diamond dust in the palm of your hand (but not nearly as scratchy)
•Realistic ghostly band of the Milky Way
•All 88 constellations with articles on their mythology
•All 9 planets (yes, we feel that little Pluto got a bad rap so in the Distant Suns universe it is still a planet)
•Sun and Moon
•GPS aware
•What's Up? Gives a quick snapshot overview of where all of the important stuff is
•Easy one-handed operation.
•Point and Identify mode reveals the hidden data for each of the stars, planets and deep-sky wonders
•Up to date Planetary data
•IM the author with astronomical questions. And he may answer if he's not napping. AIM Handle: lazyastronomer. Also on twitter at distantsuns.
What do the paid versions have that this doesn't?
• Universal version so it runs on both the iPhone and iPad (Distant Suns 3 only)
• The ability to change date/time and accelerate time to study the heavenly motions
• Up to 300,000 stars, down to magnitude 10
• Mythical figures for all constellations
• The ability to fine tune the star's sizes and images from simple to stunning
• Be able to filter out dimmer stars to match your local sky
• Compass support for iPhone 3GS, 4 and the iPad. Just aim the phone at the sky and see what you're looking at.
• Augmented Reality: displays the stars on top of your phones video image
• Nightvision mode keeps your eyes dark-adapted when outside at night
• Smoothly slews to each object when selected
• Limits the current-event alert to one showing.
• Additional landscape images
• Third toolbar for ease of navigation
• Extra in-depth data about each object
"The most beautiful computer program anywhere! Thanks!!" comment received on Twitter
The Universe just got, well...uh..."smaller."
What's New in Version 1.5.0
• New toolbar
• Revamped What’s Up? screen
• New Point and Identify display
• Now works much better in landscape
• Added proper names to the Deep Sky Wonders
• Mythological artwork for all the constellations now
iPhone Screenshots
Customer Reviews
Very, very good
Forget that this is free. It is a fantastic app for what it is trying to do! It has amazing star maps, blurbs about what you see, names of stars and constellations, position of sun/moon/planets, ecliptic plane, pretty fluid and easy to use motion, etc. And it's free! Basically, if you want to know what you're looking at up in the sky at night this is a very nice app. Of course, like any astronomy activity, you must spend 2-5 minutes figuring out where the cardinal directions are and how to map that to what you see in the app compared to what you see in the sky. (Many poor reviews seemed to hinge on this issue; sorry, no royal road to geometry). But I'm no astronomy PhD: I got the app, went outside on a clear night, got confused as to what I was seeing, used the iPhone compass to get N-S-E-W straightened out, then with that carefully look at the sky and app together (and located the big dipper which is easy but maybe you need to be able to do this as a minimum) and I was then fine to go. If the locating is a problem, I think the new paid version uses the iPhone/iPad gyroscope to figure out where you pointing it so you can literally point at the sky and have the app show you what you see... Anyways, this is really great stuff.
The Virus!
I am really fond of this app!!
It is a real help for a stargazers at any level...AND IT'S FREE so what's the complaint!!!???
Excellent App
This app is absolutely perfect for the amateur Astronomer. A portable database of virtually all deep-sky objects in real-time. I plan on buying Distant Suns 3 very soon. Very well done, sir. My dork side loves it!
- Free
- Category: Education
- Updated: Jul 16, 2011
- Version: 1.5.0
- Size: 13.5 MB
- Language: English
- Seller: Mike Smithwick
- © 2011 by First Light Designs, LLC
Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 3.0 or later
