AstroShort vs Orrery

Astro Explorer was built together — with curiosity, a sense of social connection, learning and education at its heart. It began as a gift from a dad to his kid, and grew into a hand-built universe for curious minds of every age. THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, BY TOUCH Fly between the Sun, all eight planets and the Moon. Zoom from a planet up close all the way out to the Milky Way — and the real black hole at its heart, Sagittarius A*, shown as the 2022 Event Horizon Telescope image. Nothing here needs reading to explore — a child who can't read yet can pilot the entire universe with a fingertip. DEEP FACTS ON EVERY PLANET Tap any planet — all eight, plus Pluto — to open its observation plate: its moons, its weather, the missions we've sent, and how it truly sizes up. The facts go deep, in plain language, and every one is sourced straight from NASA fact sheets and JPL. GO INSIDE REAL WORLDS Earth, Mars and the Moon aren't just spheres. Drill down to real places — the Grand Canyon, Olympus Mons, the Sea of Tranquility — meet animals, visit landmarks, and watch each place come alive with its own animated scene. Every fact carries its source, straight from NASA planetary fact sheets and the International Astronomical Union. TWO WAYS TO EXPLORE - Explorer mode (the default): a clean, premium look where grown-up facts, side-by-side planet comparisons and a daily discovery feed are one tap away. - Kid mode: a playful skin made for little hands — bigger buttons, a gentler pace, and deeper content tucked safely behind a parent hold-gesture. BUILT BY ITS EXPLORERS Here's the part we love most. Have an idea for the app? A child can simply say it out loud. Their words are turned into text right on your device, a grown-up reads it and decides whether to send it — anonymously, never any audio, never any account. On the Builders Board inside the app you can watch ideas from explorers around the world come together: what's being considered, what's being built, and what just shipped. Great ideas can become real features in days. This app is built by its explorers. HONEST BY DESIGN - Works fully offline — every planet, place and fact, with zero connection. - No accounts. No ads. No analytics. No tracking. Ever. - The only thing that ever touches the internet is the daily discovery feed: a single anonymous download of the same public file everyone gets, with no identifiers and no cookies. Offline, it shows the last feed with a visible date. - Facts are sourced and scale is honest: planets are stylized so small worlds stay visible, but the truths always hold — Jupiter is always the biggest, Mercury always closest to the Sun. Made for families. A friendly narrator reads names and facts aloud, so a pre-reader can explore and learn by ear. Safe for the youngest explorer to use alone, deep enough for the most curious adult.

See the solar system as it really is — right now. Orrery draws every planet, moon and comet exactly where it is today, turning and tilted as it really is, ray-traced live on your iPhone. Spin a world under your finger, run time forward or back by centuries, and watch the planets move. EXPLORE • The Sun, eight planets, their moons, the dwarf planets, Vesta and Halley's Comet — placed from NASA JPL's data • Real surfaces from spacecraft maps: MESSENGER, Viking, Cassini, New Horizons and more • Saturn's rings, Earth's clouds and city lights, eclipses and moon shadows • A living Sun, with sunspots, flares and eruptions that follow the real solar cycle • Halley's Comet, tumbling as it really does, growing its coma and tails as it nears the Sun FLY THE MISSIONS Follow 18 spacecraft along their real paths — Voyager, Apollo 11, Artemis, Cassini, Juno, Perseverance, Parker Solar Probe, the James Webb Space Telescope and more — with the photographs they took. LOOK INSIDE Open up 16 worlds to see their cores, mantles and oceans, to scale. HEAR SPACE Real recordings from spacecraft: the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Earth's magnetic "chorus" and more. SKY ALERTS Eclipses, planets at their best, meteor showers and the view from Titan tonight — as gentle alerts, up to three a day and never at night, worked out on your iPhone. DARK SIDE A ship game among the worlds. Every world throws a long shadow away from the Sun, and a ship in one cannot be seen from afar, so hiding is the game: when a solar flare comes, get into a shadow. Five ships, three minutes, one life, against bots that fill the other seats. A training flight teaches the controls. It runs entirely on your iPhone, needs no account and sends nothing. Two ship colours come with Orrery Pro. YOUR BIRTHDAY SKY Tell Orrery the day you were born, once, and see your age on every planet, how far Earth has carried you round the Sun, and where the planets stood that day. Then travel to that day. The date stays on your iPhone. AND BEYOND • Earth's magnetic field, pressed by the solar wind • How the solar system travels through the galaxy, and the bubble that shields it • Stand on the Moon and Mars in 3D In English, Español, Português, Français, Русский, 中文 and O'zbekcha. ORRERY PRO Orrery is free to explore. The free plan shows a few ads, only at natural pauses after you finish something and never right after you open the app. A short video is optional and opens one locked item free for 30 minutes. Where the law asks, Orrery asks for your ad privacy choice before the first ad, and you can change it any time in Settings > Discover > Privacy choices. Orrery Pro takes every ad away and unlocks every mission, every interior, every sound, the 3D surfaces, the galaxy view, Earth's magnetic field, Ultra graphics and two Dark Side ship colours: yearly with a one-week free trial, monthly, or once for life. Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period; manage or cancel them in your App Store account settings. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Privacy Policy: https://khushnid.github.io/orrery/privacy.html