# Bhagol: Indian Sky Map — Nakshatras, grahas & the sky > Nakshatras, grahas & the sky (iPhone/iPad app by Alok Mandavgane.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bhagol-indian-sky-map/id6797572192 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Alok Mandavgane](https://appshunter.io/developer/6795132798) - Category: Education, Reference - Price: Free - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 15.3 · 44 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2026-08-18 - Data updated: 2026-09-10 - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bhagol-indian-sky-map/id6797572192/reviews.md ## What is Bhagol? Point your phone at the sky and Bhagol names what you are looking at — in the sky's own Indian vocabulary, or in the modern one. Two skies over the same stars, and a switch between them. Not a Western star chart with Sanskrit labels bolted on. Bhagol draws the 27 nakshatras where the source texts put them, the Rashi Chakra against the real stars, and the nine grahas including Rahu and Ketu — the sky as Indian astronomy has described it for three thousand years, over the same stars you can walk outside and see. THE INDIAN SKY • The 27 nakshatras, each marked at its junction star (yogatara) • The Rashi Chakra — the ecliptic with its 27 divisions and all 108 pada syllables, drawn sidereally, following your chosen ayanamsa • The nine grahas: the Sun, the Moon, the five visible planets, and the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu • The horizon with the eight directions, the Lagna and the Madhya Lagna, and the Gol Yantra circles an armillary sphere is built from WHAT THE TEXTS ACTUALLY SAY Tap a star and Bhagol shows you the verse it is named in — the Surya Siddhanta, the Satapatha Brahmana, Patanjali — each with its Devanagari or IAST, a published translation, and the edition it came from. A name is a citation, not an assertion. Seventeen of the 27 nakshatra positions were re-seated against those sources rather than inherited unchecked. THE SKY IN ITS OWN LANGUAGES Bhagol carries 1,084 star names in 57 languages of South Asia — Tamil, Marathi, Santali, Gondi, Mizo, Sindhi, Kolami and fifty more — each graded by how it is used: the language's ordinary word, a folk name, a tribal name, or one borrowed from Sanskrit. Choose the languages you want and the sky is lettered in them. They do not all see the same figures: Orion is a plough almost everywhere, and three deer with two dogs behind them among the Pardhi, who still hunt. Every name carries the source it was recorded in. THE MODERN SKY Switch to the IAU sky and the same stars answer to their catalogues — Bayer, Flamsteed, Hipparcos, Messier — with their distances. • Exoplanets — the stars known to have planets • Found from India — discoveries made with Indian telescopes, each citing the paper that announced it • The invisible sky — radio sources and the radio glow, the H-alpha and infrared skies, and the cosmic microwave background • Gravitational waves, drawn as the patch of sky each came from, because a wave has no place • Now in the sky — supernovae worth looking for tonight • The five Lagrange points — findable, each with who is parked there • A depth view that stands back from the sky, and a universe scene out to the surface of last scattering THE REST OF THE SKY • 2,500 stars to naked-eye magnitude, the 88 constellations and their boundaries, and the Milky Way as the band it is • The Messier catalogue, meteor shower radiants drawn only while their shower runs, and a gallery of NASA and Hubble images, each findable in the sky HOW IT WORKS • Auto mode follows where you point; manual mode lets you drag, pinch and twist the sky by hand • Time travel — run the sky forward or back, or jump to any date • Search anything and fly to it; share where you are looking, and the link opens the app there • Names in Sanskrit, in English, or both together — "Vyadha (Sirius)" • Night mode, and a compass calibration screen when the phone loses north Bhagol carries its own astronomy and its own star catalogue, and works without a network — anywhere on Earth, on any date. No account, no sign-in. Three of its records refresh themselves from sky.alokm.com once a day, only while their layer is on, and the app sends nothing about you. The Hindi interface appears automatically on a device set to Hindi. ## Version history (last 3 releases) ### 4.5.2 — 2026-09-09 Sky names in other apps now open Bhagol. • Tap the nakshatra, the graha or the rashi in the Hindu Calendar app's panchang and Bhagol opens on that object, searched by its name. Until now the tap reached Bhagol's App Store page instead, because nothing in the app had claimed the link ### 4.5.1 — 2026-08-28 Two skies over the same stars. • Switch between the Indian sky and the modern (IAU) one. The same stars and the same camera; the catalogues' names, designations and distances on one side, the nakshatras and the grahas on the other. Each sky keeps the other's layers a tap away • Exoplanets — the stars known to have planets • Found from India — discoveries made with Indian telescopes, each with the paper that announced it • The invisible sky — radio sources and the radio glow, the H-alpha and infrared skies, and the cosmic microwave background • Gravitational waves, drawn as the patch of sky each came from: five events, from the first detection to the one whose light was seen • Now in the sky — supernovae worth looking for tonight • The sky's own named points — the zenith, the antisolar point, the apex of the Earth's way, the five Lagrange points with who is parked at each — findable and explained, and drawn nowhere • Stand back from the sky in the depth view, and out to the far wall in the universe scene • Share where you are looking; the link opens the app there, borrowing your layers without changing them • 1,084 names in 57 sky languages, each with its whole catalogue • Settings' Names section is three plain choices: script, sky language, other languages • Fixed: two contours of the radio glow near the poles were measured as smaller than they are and thrown away ### 1.0 — 2026-08-18 No release notes. ## More apps by Alok Mandavgane - [Zero Shadow Day](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/zero-shadow-day/id6795132796) - [Solpedia: Sunrise Sunset](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/solpedia-sunrise-sunset/id6797391607) - [Eclipse: Solar & Lunar Sky](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/eclipse-solar-and-lunar-sky/id6800244604) All apps by Alok Mandavgane: https://appshunter.io/developer/6795132798 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-10.*