Scott Wylie/Flickr Creative Commons
When we were in Matagorda Friday camping at the LCRA nature center and RV park, we saw the most beautiful stars we have seen since visiting he McDonald observatory in the Davis mountains. The sky was so clear and there was very little white light to distract from the beauty of the stars. The kids used the star gazer app to settle the battles over who named the stars correctly. Nothing better than the RV lifestyle. Beautiful stars, s’mores over an open fire and time with grandkids…priceless. So today I thought we could get a little “techy” and talk about some astronomy apps that’ll help identify what exactly it is that you’re looking at when you’re gazing up at a beautiful night’s sky!
One of the neatest apps is Starmap, available for iPhones. It displays suggestions for where to look and what’s available in YOUR night sky at that current time. It also dims the display and images are in red so as not to ruin your night vision! It is available for purchase and download here, and only costs $4.99.
Another great app for Android and iPhone is the SkySafari 3. It has images from the Hubble Telescope as well as images from NASA and actually comes with a subscription to SkyWeek magazine. It covers the planets in our solar system as well as their moons, displays maps of the sky with constellations, and is on $3.49. You can download it on iOs here, or Android here.
If you are a true beginner to stargazing and know little about what’s up there in the night sky, then Pocket Universe might be the app for you. You can literally point your phone at a star and it will make suggestions as to what you’re looking at based on the time, date, and GPS location of your phone. It can also quiz you on what you’ve seen to help reinforce you memory from night to night. It is available on iPhones, and you can purchase it for $2.99 and download it here.
One of the best things about the RV Life is getting out of town, a close second is being able to answer your grandkids questions like you knew the answer all along!!