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Category: Education
Developer: Vito Technology, Inc.
Requirements: iPhone OS 3.0 or later
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 25.9MB

What is it?

As Vito Technology will tell you, “Star Walk is your interactive guide to the sky.” The app takes advantage of just about every aspect of your iPhone (touch, accelerometer, and even the magnetometer and digital compass in the 3GS) to make constellation searching and identification as easy as looking up.

How does it work?

When you first launch Star Walk, it will ask if it can use your current location to determine what you can theoretically see in the night sky. I say theoretically, because Star Walk will show you things most of you will have no chance of viewing due to light pollution. But what you can see, Star Walk can identify for you. Earlier this summer, during the Perseids meteor shower, I was trying to show my daughter the various constellations I could identify. Orion and the Big Dipper were no problem, but I couldn’t get her to see Cassiopeia. When I pulled up the night sky in Star Walk and had her look, she saw it almost instantly, and now has an idea of what to look for in the night sky.

Now, how does that translate to practical use? With an iPhone or iPod touch, you have to know which way you’re facing. Use your finger to spin the sky screen, and you can line up with what you’re actually looking at. Star Walk will show the horizon line, and you can of course pull straight up to see what’s directly above you. Nearly any object on the phone can be tapped to pull up details, but cooler than that, Star Walk will identify the constellations and throw the image around it so you can see what the constellation represents.

It gets even better if you have an iPhone 3GS, as Star Walk will spin the display as you spin in place. Where you point the phone is what you see. It’s very, very cool, and very helpful in finding particular objects or constellations. Note that you can also search for these by name, then tap the result to switch back to the sky view.

There are a few other features that show the developers had their users in mind. First, there’s a night mode, which sounds fairly obvious, yeah, but it’s quite useful. This dims the display and throws a red filter over it so the iPhone’s display isn’t blinding your view of the night sky (see image below). Also, you can adjust the number of objects that appear on your phone to make it more closely represent what you actually see, and you can turn on/off the names.

And do you want one final, wonderful touch? The app shoots soft meteors across the display, just because it can. The whole package comes together amazingly well, providing a perfect blend of educational value with coolness factor.

Features

• Simple touch controls
• Find location automatically or manually
• Options for adjusting object brightness and screen dimming
• Information on over 9,000 celestial bodies and objects
• Moon phases
• Time Machine feature allows you to view night skies past, present and future

App it up, sum, it up

If you’re at all interested in astronomy, Star Walk is a fantastic resource for an evening of star gazing. If you’re not into astronomy, you just may be after playing around with this. Yes, it’s educational, but more importantly, it’s very cool. You can tell the developers wanted to make sure they worked in there what makes astronomy so fascinating and fun, rather than just throw names and numbers at you. What’s more, it’s easy to use, so you can spend more time looking at the sky and less time pushing buttons. Get this app, you won’t be disappointed.

Cost - $4.99
Worth the Money? - Without a doubt. It would be worth it if it were three times this much.
Availability - Now, in the iTunes App Store.