Comparison

Earth Science Explorer vs Astrelia

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Earth Science Explorer

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Discover fascinating information using the Interactive Earth Science Explorer. Select the topic that you wish to explore and then hit the power button to zoom off to views of the Earth that lead to even more interesting facts. When you arrive a myriad of interesting facts await you. Tap a button access interesting data about each of the topics with include the interior layers of the Earth, the structure and formation of volcanoes, types of rocks, continents and oceans -- all presented in an interactive format. Tap the info button to read interesting facts about each important each topic. Teachers will really like this app. After students have read about the Earth's structure and features, they can tap the quiz button to measure their reading comprehension. In addition to the quiz there is also a word game that helps students review the information presented. Charts and graphs are used to present comparison information about the volcanoes, continents and oceans. Interactive Earth Science Explorer is available for iOS and tvOS devices. It is just beautiful on a big screen TV and would be a wonderfully exciting tool in any science classroom.

About

Astrelia

Features
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Raise your phone toward the sky and Astrelia shows you what is actually up there: stars, planets, the Moon and the Sun, placed for your exact location and this exact instant. Tap anything and it tells you everything it knows. POINT AT THE SKY Around 8,900 naked-eye stars, sized and coloured the way the eye sees them. Constellation lines, the ecliptic with the live planets, and a Sun and Moon computed with topocentric parallax and atmospheric refraction, so they sit where you can genuinely see them. Pinch to zoom and more names appear. Tap any star to identify it. Scrub time twelve hours forward or back and watch the whole sky move. Aim at something bright and align, and the compass error that ruins most sky apps is cancelled out. TONIGHT One screen for what is happening: the Moon's phase, sunrise and sunset, which planets are up right now and which are below the horizon, meteor showers near their peak, and what is coming โ€” eclipses, oppositions, solstices, greatest elongations. All of it searched out of the live ephemeris, not read from a hardcoded list. NUMBERS THAT MEAN SOMETHING Every object opens into real astrophysics: distance, spectral class, temperature, luminosity, derived radius, orbital elements. Next to them, plain language โ€” the year the light you are looking at left that star, how many Suns it would take to match it, what you would weigh on that planet, where the star falls on the HR diagram, and a one-line biography of its life. Anything unfamiliar has a glossary entry a tap away. THE GALAXY MAP Leave Earth entirely and free-fly a 3D map built from real data: about 25,000 catalogued stars at their true distances, the Milky Way as its real barred spiral, and deep-sky landmarks at their real positions, distances and sizes. Twenty-seven nebulae are built from public-domain telescope photographs, so their shape and colour are the ones the telescope saw โ€” fly into them and they hold up in three dimensions. Fly to a star and its confirmed exoplanets are there, orbiting it. At the galactic centre, Sagittarius A* is rendered by tracing light through curved spacetime: the galaxy behind it genuinely bends around it. CONSTELLATIONS All 88 IAU constellations, plus asterisms, historical figures and cultural skies, each drawn over its real stars. Open any of them in 3D and the familiar shape falls apart into deep space, because a constellation is a line of sight rather than a thing. Astrelia computes all of it on your device from catalogs that ship inside the app. No account, no subscription, no ads, no tracking, and no network needed to use it. Every dataset, algorithm and image behind it is credited in About โ†’ Sources. Astrelia has a sister app, Selenia, which reads the same real sky the astrological way.

Screenshots

Astrelia4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Astrelia at Free against Earth Science Explorer's $1.99. Earth Science Explorer's advantage is iOS requirement (12.0 vs 26.0). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Astrelia is free to download; Earth Science Explorer costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
Earth Science Explorer versus Astrelia: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterEarth Science ExplorerAstrelia
Price$1.99Free โ€” better
Update frequencyEvery 2 monthsโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPad, Mac, Apple TV โ€” betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS12.0 โ€” better26.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size57 MB41 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperVentura Educational SystemsElysia Munoz

In-app purchases

None

Earth Science Explorer

No in-app purchases

None

Astrelia

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Earth Science Explorer free?
Earth Science Explorer costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Astrelia free?
Astrelia is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Earth Science Explorer or Astrelia have ads?
Neither Earth Science Explorer nor Astrelia shows ads.

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