Stargazer

BUILT FOR iPHONE DUO — AND THE SKY NO LONGER DISAPPEARS WHEN YOU TAP IT. On a big screen — a Duo's inner display, an iPad, a Mac — tapping a star used to slide a card up over the very thing you were looking at. Not any more. A PANEL BESIDE THE SKY, NOT OVER IT Tap anything and its details open in a column down one side. The sky stays live the whole time: keep panning, keep pinching, keep tapping. Everything lands in the panel — objects, constellations, Tonight, Nova, search, the lot. The clever bit is what the sky does about it. As the panel opens, the whole sky quietly re-aims so that what you tapped ends up centred in the part you can still see, rather than hiding behind the panel. Stars keep drifting along behind the glass, because a star field cut off with a straight edge looks like a bug. Left-handed? Settings → Detail panel → Side → Left. Or turn the whole thing off and have your bottom sheet back. FOLD IT AND THE LAYOUT FOLLOWS Half-fold an iPhone Duo and Stargazer reads the hinge and lays itself out along it, so nothing ever sits in the crease. Hold it like a book and the sky takes one page and the details take the other, split exactly on the fold. Stand it on a table like a tiny laptop and it splits the other way: live sky on the half you are looking at, a planetarium console on the half lying flat. The console lists everything above the horizon right now, brightest first, with how high and which way to look. Tap any of it to lock on. Tonight, Search, Nova and time travel sit under your thumb. It is the closest thing to an observatory console you can fit on a camping table, and it is very hard to stop fiddling with. No Duo? Tabletop is a button. Prop any phone or iPad against a mug and you get the same two panes. ALSO • The toolbars, compass and controls now move aside for the panel instead of hiding beneath it • With something locked on, the rest of the app stays reachable rather than greying out • The tool column reshapes itself on short screens instead of running off the bottom edge