# Orbital Mechanics — The sky above you, any date

> The sky above you, any date (iPhone/iPad app by Justin Monahan.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/orbital-mechanics/id6797245689 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Justin Monahan](https://appshunter.io/developer/1816619577)
- Category: Education, Reference
- Price: $4.99
- Age rating: 4+
- Requires: iOS 15.0 · 4 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-08-28
- Data updated: 2026-09-10
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/orbital-mechanics/id6797245689/reviews.md

## What is Orbital Mechanics?

Orbital Mechanics shows you where the planets are, were, and will be — right now from where you are standing, or on any date you care to name.

A 24-hour dial puts you at the centre with the Sun, Moon, planets, bright stars and constellations placed by true compass direction and altitude. One glance tells you what is overhead, what has set, and what is about to rise.

Then move the date and time and watch the same sky run forwards or backwards, or switch views and step outside the Earth entirely.


THREE WAYS TO LOOK

• Clock — a 24-hour local sky dial. Noon at the top, midnight at the bottom, everything placed at its real bearing from your location.
• 2D Map — the solar system from above, orbits drawn to scale, zoomable down to a single planet.
• 3D View — fly through the solar system. Orbit any body, hover above it, or stand on its surface and look up.


SCRUB TIME

Type a date and time, step them with the arrows, or drag the speed slider and let time flow, from minutes per second up to years per second. Watch Mars go retrograde, watch the Galilean moons swing around Jupiter, watch the sky wheel over your head through a whole night. The date range runs from roughly 13,000 BCE to 17,000 CE, so you can look up an eclipse your grandparents saw, a conjunction you have read about, or a sky that has not happened yet. Accuracy is at its best across modern centuries and degrades gracefully toward the far ends.


BUILT ON REAL ASTRONOMY

Positions come from VSOP87 and ELP2000 — the same analytical theories professional software uses — computed on your device to within a few arcseconds. Planets carry their true axial tilt and rotation, so Jupiter's Great Red Spot is only facing you when it really is, and the correct continent turns into daylight as the clock advances.

• Earth with real coastlines, cloud cover, an atmospheric limb and night-side city lights
• The Moon, Mars, Mercury and Pluto with cratered surfaces
• Saturn's rings with the Cassini division and the Encke gap
• Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune with banded, turbulent cloud tops
• Named asteroids and Halley's Comet, each an irregular lump rather than a ball
• The Milky Way laid along its true galactic plane, plus Andromeda
• 25 constellations including all twelve of the zodiac
• Every named moon in the solar system, ranked by size on a single slider


THINGS TO TRY

• Stand on Earth in the 3D view for a ground-level sky with a horizon and compass — a planetarium for any date you choose.
• Pull the planet-size slider down to true scale and see how staggeringly empty space really is.
• Turn on barycentric mode and watch the Sun itself wobble around the solar system's true centre of mass — mostly Jupiter's doing.
• Set your birthday and see the sky you were born under.


PRIVATE AND OFFLINE

No account. No ads. No analytics. No trackers. Nothing to sign up for and nothing to leak. Your location, if you share it, is used on the device to work out your horizon and is never transmitted anywhere. Every calculation runs locally, so the app works in full with no signal at all, on a plane, in a tent, or out where the sky is actually dark. The only thing it ever asks the network is whether a newer version of itself has been published.


## Version history (last 2 releases)

### 1.0.1 — 2026-09-02

Fixes for iPad, and a nudge when there is an update.

• The speed and planet-size sliders beside the graphic are properly vertical again on older iPads, where they had been rendering as tiny horizontal stubs, and they are a comfortable size to hit on touch.
• Slider tracks draw correctly on older iOS versions instead of leaving the thumb floating.
• The app now tells you when a new version is available.
• Clearer wording throughout the settings, and a listing that no longer undersells the date range.

### 1.0 — 2026-08-28

No release notes.

## More apps by Justin Monahan

- [Muscle Memory:Recovery Tracker](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/muscle-memoryrecovery-tracker/id6746391176)

All apps by Justin Monahan: https://appshunter.io/developer/1816619577

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*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.*