Rainfall Sandbox vs Open Planetarium

Ever wondered how rainclouds and land impact each other? Why does one side of a mountain seem greener than the other? Build your own world and test out different scenarios to get to the bottom of these questions and discover the secret of orographic lift! Rainfall Sandbox is an engineering simulation where players can choose between various land and water formations to create their own geosphere. Observe how rainclouds form, see where they go, and witness how your landscape changes! * Aligned to educational science standards for third to fifth grade * Grounded in educational psychology research * Sandbox design dynamically simulates the scientific phenomena of orographic lift * Designed for play and discovery-based learning * Introduces students to concepts such as orographic lift, and geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interactions * Fully standalone learning experience * Designed to be used with SSEC Science for the Classroom Curriculum

Open Planetarium is a beautiful, scientifically accurate virtual planetarium. The full sky works completely offline — all star, constellation, and deep-sky data is bundled with the app. FEATURES • Real star catalog: 8,920 stars down to magnitude 6.5 (HYG v4.1), with scientifically accurate star colors derived from each star's B-V color index • All 88 constellations: lines, names (English / Japanese / Latin), and official IAU boundaries • Solar system: the Sun, the Moon with phases and lunar age, and all 7 planets, computed with Meeus/Standish-compliant algorithms • Deep-sky objects: the complete Messier catalog (110 objects) plus major NGC/IC objects — 717 objects in total, with type icons • Powerful search: object names, constellations, M/NGC/IC numbers, planets • Object details: magnitude, coordinates, altitude/azimuth, and rise/transit/set times for your location • Time travel: set any date and time with the calendar dialog, scrub through the day with the time slider, or play diurnal motion at 60×/600×/3600× • Observing location: pick your spot on a zoomable world map with 1,250+ cities, search by country/city, enter coordinates manually, or use GPS • Survey imagery: overlay DSS2 sky survey layers (downloaded on demand and cached for offline re-display) • Equipment & field-of-view simulator: register telescopes, cameras, eyepieces and Barlows/reducers to preview framing and plan mosaic imaging • Milky Way rendering and adjustable light-pollution levels PRIVACY Your location is used only on your device to compute the sky above you — it is never sent anywhere. If location permission is denied, you can set the observing location manually. Open Planetarium is free, open source (MIT), with no ads and no tracking.