Comparison

Solar Journey 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

Solar Journey

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Fly to the Moon, visit Mars, and relive the Apollo journeys in an immersive spacecraft cockpit. Start with the free Earth-to-Moon journey; Apollo replays, Mars, and more are available with a one-time Full Access purchase. RELIVE SIX APOLLO LANDINGS Follow Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 from launch through their lunar adventures and return. Watch the spacecraft change through key mission stages, follow the descent, and explore mission events and lunar surface stories at your own pace. A VIEW INTO LUNAR HISTORY The final descent leads into a fixed exterior scene made from that mission's later EVA archival photography. See the lander and lunar landscape in historical detail. These images are clearly labelled archival stills, not recordings of the touchdown moment. YOUR SEAT IN SPACE Switch between cockpit, chase, close-up, and overview views during flight. Use the time-warp dial, pause, or continue as the journey unfolds. Dedicated iPad layouts support portrait and landscape. MAKE THE JOURNEY YOURS Save completed journeys in your on-device Flight Log. Create a mission card with your name or a portrait, then share it using the system share sheet. Free cards include a download QR code; Full Access cards omit it. START FREE, EXPLORE FURTHER The guided Earth-to-Moon journey and MESSENGER historical replay are free. A one-time Full Access in-app purchase unlocks Apollo and other additional mission replays, Mars, more destinations, and advanced controls. No subscription. Some journeys and optional assets need a download and internet access. Solar Journey is an educational spaceflight experience. Historical replays combine mission-report events, source data, and disclosed reconstruction; camera framing and attitudes are visualizations, not live telemetry or flight training. Planned journeys are educational models, not operational flight plans. Data-source credits do not imply agency endorsement.

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

Solar Journey4 screens
Astrelia4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Astrelia at none against Solar Journey's 1. Solar Journey's advantage is iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads 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

Both are free to download. Solar Journey sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Astrelia asks for nothing beyond the download.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 4 level
Solar Journey versus Astrelia: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSolar JourneyAstrelia
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyFortnightlyโ€”
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo โ€” better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.0 โ€” better26.0
Further details โ€” not scored
Size601 MB41 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developerๆ–นๅฎ‡ ๅ‘จElysia Munoz

In-app purchases

1 purchases

Solar Journey

One-time1
  • Full Solar Navigation$9.99
None

Astrelia

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Solar Journey free?
Solar Journey is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Astrelia free?
Astrelia is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Solar Journey or Astrelia have ads?
Neither Solar Journey nor Astrelia shows ads.

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