Star Rover HD vs Orbit Map
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Star Rover HD
Explore the night sky with a realistic planetarium on your device. Identify stars, planets, and constellations in real-time by simply pointing your device. Travel through time and space to view celestial events and learn about the cosmos.
- Real-time star map updates
- Identify celestial objects
- View constellations with artwork
- Explore planets and moons
- Moon phases and meteor showers
- Time and location travel
- Over 120,000 stars
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Do you love the starry night? Do you want to know everything in the sky? Star Rover HD is the fantastic planetarium for your iPad. Just hold up your iPad and Star Rover HD will tell you exactly what you are pointing at. Star Rover HD determines your location automatically. You'll see the stars, moon, planets, constellations in their proper place from your current location. As you move your iPad, the star map updates in real time. Star Rover HD makes the virtual sky a gorgeous view. You can see star twinkling, beautiful nebulae, occasional meteor and even sunset glow in the evening. Star Rover HD is very easy to use. You can simply change the sky view in settings and use Quick Find for everything you want to know in the night sky. Star Rover HD lets you set your location manually so you can see the sky from any part of the world. It also lets you travel to the future or the past and see the sky on different dates and times. If you are planning for a solar eclipse, this is the app you need. Features - Over 120,000 stars. - All 88 constellations with beautiful artworks. - Planets and their moons with stunning graphics. - Moon phases. - Real images of Messier objects. - Sky objects information. - Realistic Milky Way. - Equatorial and azimuthal grids. - Sky view underneath the horizon. - Visual magnitude adjustment. - Manually time & date setting. - Manually location setting. - Quick Find. - Point and view.
Orbit Map
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Orbit Map is a working atlas of everything humanity has left in orbit. Around 31,900 tracked objects, propagated on your device with the same SGP4/SDP4 model the industry uses, drawn on a real 3D Earth you can turn in your hands. Point it at tonight and it tells you when the Space Station crosses your roof. Search a name or a NORAD number and the orbit appears. Tap one group and ten thousand Starlink satellites light up at once. WHAT YOU CAN SEE • Every catalogued object: payloads, spent rocket stages and debris • Live positions from public orbital elements, computed offline on your device • Orbit paths, ground tracks and the horizon footprint of any spacecraft • Starlink, GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, OneWeb, weather satellites, debris shells • Altitude, speed, period, inclination, apogee, perigee, country, launch year • Filter and colour the field by object type, altitude, country or status • Detailed 3D models of real spacecraft families • Run time forward and back, or freeze the atlas and read it PASSES OVER YOUR HEAD • When the Station, Tiangong or Hubble crosses your sky • Rise, peak and set with azimuth and elevation for each pass • Sunlight and darkness checked, because a pass you cannot see is not a pass • Any place on Earth as your observing point, with its own time zone • Notifications before something flies over THE ACADEMY 54 lessons, more than eight hours, written for this atlas rather than borrowed from a textbook. Every lesson carries measured numbers you can verify in the inspector, the misconception it exists to correct, two things to do on the globe, a comprehension check and the vocabulary it introduces. Nine modules, from the first question to responsible interpretation: orbital mechanics. Reading element sets. Orbit families. Real missions. Observing the sky. The space environment. Debris and safety. Signals and navigation. Data literacy. Sourced from NASA, ESA, CelesTrak and Space-Track. ON EVERY SCREEN YOU OWN iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV and Apple Vision Pro. Lesson progress, observing places and display settings stay together through iCloud. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT IS Orbit Map propagates public General Perturbations elements. Accuracy degrades as elements age and can differ by kilometres. Pass timing uses geometric sunlight and a 10° horizon; weather and apparent brightness are not modelled, so a sunlit pass is an opportunity rather than a promise. This is an educational atlas. It is not a conjunction assessment tool, not a navigation aid, and not for antenna pointing. Every screen states which snapshot it is using and how old the elements behind it are, because knowing the age of your data is part of reading it. WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM Public GP elements from Space-Track.org and USSPACECOM, cross-checked against an independent CelesTrak set before any release ships. Positions come from a Vallado-compatible SGP4/SDP4 implementation verified against the published reference vectors. Catalogue updates are signed and every byte is checked before it replaces what you already have. PREMIUM The free atlas is complete and accurate: the whole globe, the entire catalogue, search, orbit paths, and passes for the Station, Tiangong and Hubble. Premium opens all 54 lessons, every constellation, the full Orbital Lens, seven-day forecasts from up to ten saved places, pass notifications, every spacecraft model, the time machine and iCloud sync. Subscription Terms: Payment charged to iTunes Account. Auto-renews unless disabled 24 hours before period ends. Manage in Account Settings. https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Data provided by Space-Track.org and USSPACECOM. Validation data provided by CelesTrak, Dr. T.S. Kelso. Earth imagery courtesy of NASA.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Orbit Map at Free against Star Rover HD's $1.99. Orbit Map also leads on device support (5 vs 1). Star Rover HD's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3) and iOS requirement (9.0 vs 18.0). On ads there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Orbit Map is free to download; Star Rover HD costs $1.99 up front. Orbit Map sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Star Rover HD asks for nothing beyond the download.
| Parameter | Star Rover HD | Orbit Map |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | Free — better |
| Rating | 4.7 (97 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 88.6% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 97 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 6 months | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Paid | — |
| Devices | iPad | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, Vision Pro — better |
| Requires iOS | 9.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 52 MB | 90 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | 寒飞 易 | Igor Bidenko |
Bugs and requests
Star Rover HD
Reported bugs
2 issues- Screen does not rotate to landscape view on iPad
- Compass shows interference in some areas
Requested features
4 requests- Add Proxima Centauri
- Provide constellation pictures and names simultaneously
- Improve brightness representation for bright stars
- Add Iridium Flare tracking
Orbit Map
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Star Rover HD
No in-app purchases
Orbit Map
- Orbit Map - Monthly$4.991 Month
- Orbit Map - Annual7 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Orbit Map - Lifetime$39.99
Questions
Is Star Rover HD free?
Is Orbit Map free?
Do Star Rover HD or Orbit Map have ads?
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