Stellarium Mobile Sky Map

Stellarium Mobile Sky Map is a mobile astronomy app featuring touch-screen navigation and GPS positioning to view the night sky. Kids can open the app and immediately see which constellations, stars, and planets are in the sky above them. In sensor mode, they can point the device directly at the areas they’re curious about and see the names of planets, constellations, major stars, and nebulae. An interesting feature: the ability to customize the names based upon different star lore. Kids can choose to view the names of stars, planets, and constellations from Western (default), Aztec, Chinese, Egyptian, Inuit, Korean, Lakota, or Maori traditions.

Kids can choose in the options menu which items to display and which to name. The amount of information contained in this mobile planetarium is nearly as vast as the sky, so kids will need to restrain themselves from labeling every option at once, lest nothing be discernible. They can view the constellations, with grid lines and artistic renderings and names, and then add in one of the navigational grid lines, or choose another of the many options.

The renderings are realistic and beautiful, but even more features set this mobile planetarium apart from the crowd. First, the app was developed by the same team that developed the well-respected desktop software Stellarium. This mobile version includes the extensive database of more than 600,000 stars, as well as illustrations and line drawings for the constellations.

Second, kids with an interest in programming may be especially drawn to Stellarium in either version because it uses open-source code. Last, kids can read about constellation names from 12 different cultures as well as a bit of history of astronomy in each of the cultures. So informative, so cool. Just a note: If kids use the search function, they need to know that the search uses Android-predictive text rather than a traditional type and search.