If you’re into astronomy at all, even just a little, If you’ve ever looked at the night sky for more than ten seconds, if you’ve ever been awake after dark, then you’re going to want to get Distant Suns for the iPhone. What? You have no iPhone? Well, get one because once you have it, you’ll be able to run Distant Suns.
This amazing program was first written by Mike Smithwick in the mid 1980′s. that’s right, way back in ’85 or ’87 (depending on whether you read his website or the App Store blurb.) At any rate, it’s been around a while but it still shines (sorry.)
In a nutshell it is an interactive guide to the night sky, showing stars, planets, constellations, deep sky objects, even a choice of foreground landscapes to present a more realistic horizon. Each item in its huge database has information about what it it, where it is, and in many cases (I couldn’t check more than a few) photos. The photo of Saturn, for instance, is just beautiful.
The user interface is a joy to use allowing you to view two preset magnifications plus stretch or shrink the view with the two-finger squeeze gesture. You can turn on all sorts of information like constellation names, outlines, star names, a grid, etc. and then toggle them all with one simple touch of a control. This makes it wonderfully easy to switch between a view of what the sky actually looks like and the sky with the information you’re interested in superimposed on it. You can view the sky from any place on earth at any time in the past or future. It can use the iPhone’s location awareness to automatically adjust the view to your current location. Of course it has a night vision mode in which all of the text pages are in red on black. The list of features goes on and on.
Don’t let the rather “high” price tag put you off. It’s definitely worth every penny of its $5.99 App Store price.
