4.4 Star Rating with over 6,400 reviews.
Star Walk 2 is an exquisite sky map that combines astronomical data with premium technology to deliver an effortless journey through thousands of stars, comets, constellations, satellites, dwarf planets, moons, meteor showers, asteroids, deep sky objects, nebulae and galaxies. All you have to do is point your device at the sky and the star map will get aligned with what you have in the night sky above you.
https://block-this.com/ .VPN ad blocker for non rooted (giggity) devices. I have been using it for a while and it hasn't affected my battery life.
Hmm… Routing all my traffic through a 3rd party (which was blocked from Play Store) sounds a bit extreme and risky…
But thanks for the suggestion.
DNS66 is another. From the developer "It uses a VPN to redirect only DNS queries (the one resolving a name like reddit.com to an IP address) to servers you defined (and/or the default system servers). Before sending out a query, it checks if the host is blocked and if so just directly sends back an answer on-device.
This makes it extremely lightweight, as none of your actual traffic goes through it, only the name lookups."
It is available on F-droid as well
@Make it so: There's also this: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.opera.vpn
I personally haven't used it, but I've hard some good things from friends.
EDIT: Wait… no… it blocks ad trackers. Not ads.
This is a great app, have it on my Windows phone. Probably one of my favourite's.
Paid for it on my iOS devices a week ago… get it for my android tablet for free! Great app.
Perfect timing. Recently collimated my dob in preparation for the winter skies and grabbed some other apps.
Thanks op.
Recently collimated my dob
You keep your dirty little habits to yourself young man.
skyview or this one?
This one is free. Try it. If it meets your needs, great. If after that you want another app, spend money on the other one.
This one hands down. Always been the best.
Great app.
Looks nice enough, but a bit of a shame that there's "additional content" to be purchased if you want the "full" app.
Worth it if you have more than a passing interest in astronomy and particularly if you have any kind of Google Play credit lying around unused. This isn't the only worthwhile astronomy app but it's a good one. Beware the additional content uses up a lot of space. So unless you're in a position to use the SD card that could be a deal breaker. I can name others if people are interested. And no I'm not affiliated with this one or any of them. I am just passionate about astronomy. All the good ones require space though if you get serious and want to be able to zoom into detail.
Definitely curious to know what others you recommend. Lots of space on my HTC 10, that's not a worry.
Android:
Stellarium - This one isn't too heavy weight. I tend to use the PC version more but worth having this on mobile. Paid.
Sky Map by Google, also not too heavy, and free.
SkEye - Free and Pro version. Similar concept to Sky Map but different execution.
Mobile Observatory. Haven't used this as much but looks very cool from what little use I have had of it. Paid.
Sky Portal - Free. Well regarded. Made by Celestron (telescope company).
Starlight - Explore the Stars. Free but has ads. Haven't used it as much, but good rating.
Skychart by Escapist games. Haven't used it as much, but good rating.
Sky Safari. Comes in version 4 and 5 with regular (no addition to the name), plus and pro. Pro requires a lot of space. No upgrade path between 4 and 5. Expensive. Will control a telescope with the right hardware attached.
Same company that makes Starwalk also makes Solar Walk and Solar Walk 2 with detail about solar system objects. Solar Walk also has a lite version but it's quite limited.
DSO Planner if you're serious about using a telescope and looking at deep space objects. There are free, plus and pro versions. Pro is expensive and has this warning is on the page: "Before installation please make sure that you have at least 2 GB of free space on your internal SD card to download application databases! (Note: due to Google Play rules this data cannot be moved to your external SD card - you must have 2 GB free on your internal SD card!)"
Predisat - for satellite spotting. Has a free and pro version. Simple interface.
Heavens Above - also for satellite spotting.
Space Junk Pro - also for satellite spotting. Has a free and pro version.
Sun Surveyor for sunrise and moonset times in a simple app. Lite (free) and pro versions.
Solar HD Explorer
Simple Rockets - a Game where you design 2D rockets. Very well regarded but though I own it I haven't had time to play it.
There are also a number of free and paid lunar atlases worth having.
What you get with all of these ones that have multiple versions is additional features and/or more objects or even object types. Some of them are able to control telescopes though I've never tried.
On the PC side:
Stellarium. Free on the PC. One of the best. Grab it.
Starry Night. Comes in different editions. More detailed than Stellarium but expensive. I haven't tried the latest version. But very very good.
Skychart (formerly Cartes Du Ciel). Amazing range of addon catalogs. Will even use the largest publicly available catalgos which are hundreds of GB. Free
Celestia - Space flight simulator (but without that pesky light speed limit). Discontinued. Use to have association with NASA. Very detailed. There is an education version that has extras. Free.
Space Engine - Spirtual successor to Celestia in some ways. Haven't used it as much.
Orbiter - Space craft simulator. Very involved. Difficult due to realism. Free.
Kerbal Space Program - Space program and simulator including rocket and plane building. EXTREMELY involved. Paid.
Virtual Moon Atlas. Incredible detail! Free.
HeavenSat for satlites. Free.
Halo Northen Sky. Free.
Then there's the specialist stuff for stacking images, processing data from Hubble (and images) and other telescopes etc. That gets extremely involved. Some of it requires Linux. I'll save that for another post shall I?
Wow, thanks for the detail. Much to digest!
Back to $399 again?
It's saying $3.99 for me, not $399 :)
Doh! Pesky .
Expired :'(
![[FREE] Star Walk 2 @ Google Play (Was $3.99)](https://files.ozbargain.com.au/n/45/307045.jpg?h=dc63f37d)
Still has ads though…