Astrelia vs Deep Sky Object Finder

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 — 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 — 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 — 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 → Sources. Astrelia has a sister app, Selenia, which reads the same real sky the astrological way.

Deep Sky Object Finder turns your iPhone or iPad into an interactive map of the sky. Move your device to explore the sky in real time using its heading and elevation sensors. Identify visible stars, planets, the Sun, the Moon, constellations, and deep-sky objects. You can also browse manually, zoom in for a closer look, or search for a specific object and center it on the display. Features include: - Live sky tracking using device orientation - Stars above and below the horizon - Planets, the Sun, and the Moon with lunar phases - Messier deep-sky objects - Constellation lines, names, illustrations, and descriptions - Tap objects and constellation names for additional information - Links to relevant Wikipedia articles - Search and automatic object centering - Adjustable observation time for planning later in the day or night - Pinch-to-zoom and manual sky navigation - Optional camera-assisted aiming view - Right ascension and declination grid - Horizon and ecliptic overlays - Configurable display options - Offline sky-map operation after installation Whether you are learning the constellations, looking for a planet, or planning an evening under the stars, Deep Sky Object Finder helps you understand what is in the sky and where to find it. Location and motion access are used to align the sky map with your surroundings. Camera access is optional and is used only when you enable the camera-assisted aiming view.