Starmap vs Ishigaki Star Guide

Point your phone at the sky and see what's there — stars, planets, constellations, the northern lights. Starmap works completely offline, anywhere, with no signal. Built by a professional astronomer and given freely. No ads. No subscriptions. No in-app purchases. No tracking of any kind. Everything is unlocked from the first launch. AURORA AND NORTHERN LIGHTS Live aurora forecasts from NOAA, with the Kp index, the three-day outlook and the auroral oval for both hemispheres. Know whether tonight is worth staying up for. OUT WITH THE FAMILY Hold the phone up and it names whatever you're looking at. An arrow guides you to any planet, star or constellation. Every catalogue is stored on the device, so it works in the mountains, at sea, or anywhere without a signal. THE SUN AND THE MOON Sunspots, flares and X-ray flux, live from NOAA. 9,900 named lunar features with their origins and etymologies. Rise, transit and set times for everything, which you can send to your calendar. FOR SERIOUS OBSERVERS 2.5 million stars stored offline, down to magnitude 15. The full Messier, NGC, IC and Caldwell catalogues, plus Sharpless, van den Bergh, Lynds, Barnard and Abell clusters. Live comets, asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects from the Minor Planet Center. Deep-sky records enriched on demand from SIMBAD, searchable by any catalogue identifier. AT THE EYEPIECE Define your telescope, eyepieces and camera, and see the true field of view you'll actually get, with Telrad rings and reticles. A full red night-vision mode for use in the dark. The whole sky in your pocket — free, because that is what it should be.

Hold your phone up to the night sky and the stars in front of you appear on screen, named. A star guide built for one sky: Ishigaki Island, Okinawa. Ishigaki sits at 24.6 degrees north. From here the Southern Cross clears the horizon from winter dawns to spring evenings, a sight never seen from mainland Japan. POINT AND FIND AR mode draws constellation lines and star names over the live camera view, so the screen matches the sky above you; with the camera off it works as a plain chart. Only the constellation at the centre of your view lights up, the others fade back. 5,070 stars down to magnitude 6.0, the naked-eye limit, with lines for all 88 constellations. THE SOUTHERN CROSS, WITH TIMES Search for the Southern Cross: if it is up, an arrow at the edge of the screen guides you as you turn towards it; if not, the time machine jumps to the next time it will be. Check tonight's sky before you go outside. STAR NAMES FROM THE YAEYAMA ISLANDS Antares is Beecha-bushi. The Pleiades are Muri-ga-bushi. Polaris is Ninufa-bushi. The Milky Way is Tingara. Tap a star to see the Yaeyama name beside the modern one, with the story attached. Search "Haimuru-bushi" and the Southern Cross comes up. FIND THE CONSTELLATIONS AND COLLECT THEM Follow the arrow until the constellation is in front of you, hold it there, and tap "Found it" to record it in your book. A guide character then talks about that constellation and suggests a nearby one you have not found yet, arrow ready. Eighty-one constellations are reachable from Ishigaki; the ones that barely clear the horizon, like the Southern Cross at 8 degrees, rank as legendary. Records only count at night at the real current time, so the book holds only what you actually looked at. GUIDED PROGRAMMES, SPOKEN Like a planetarium show, a guided programme walks you through the sky one constellation at a time. "Yaeyama Winter Sky: An Introduction" is free: on nights from December to February it takes you from Orion to the Pleiades, the Winter Triangle and Canopus low over the sea, narrated in the unhurried voice of an island elder, so you can keep looking up. Every description card can also be read aloud. More themed programmes will follow. WILL IT BE CLEAR TONIGHT? - Sky Score: cloud, moonlight, humidity, visibility, rain and pressure scored out of 100, with the best hour highlighted (needs a connection) - Tonight's Highlights: end of twilight, moonrise and moonset, the moonless dark window, the Southern Cross transit, active showers - Moon Calendar: a month of phases at a glance FINDING DARK SKY Thirty observing spots around Ishigaki and the Yaeyama Islands, each with a Bortle darkness rating and distance from you, with town lights drawn on the map. Tap one for directions. ALSO INCLUDED - Time machine: step by second to year, or play time forward and watch the sky turn - Deep sky: 19 objects including Omega Centauri, Andromeda and the Orion Nebula - A Milky Way drawn from measured isophote data, Sagittarius bulge and Great Rift included - Meteors from the active shower's radiant at a realistic rate - Sound effects and a gentle haptic tap when you find a constellation - Five languages: Japanese, English, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Korean MADE BY A STARGAZING GUIDE OF TEN YEARS Hoshihaku, Inc. has run the Nagareboshi-no-oka stargazing tour on Ishigaki for ten years and guided over 60,000 visitors. The explanations are the answers we give guests in the field. PRIVACY - No account, no sign-up, no name or email to enter anywhere - No advertising, no analytics, no tracking - Settings and your collection stay on your device - Coordinates are sent only to fetch the weather forecast, and are not stored - The camera draws the AR background only; nothing is photographed, saved or sent - The microphone is never used Everything but the weather-based Sky Score works offline, guided programmes included. Bearings come from the magnetometer, which reads inaccurately inside a vehicle or near steel.