Distant Suns

Distant Suns 3-(Universal)

Why settle for eye-candy when you can settle for mind-candy?

In 2008, Distant Suns brought the evening skies to your iPhone, in 2009, Grand Tour brought the Solar System. In 2010, Distant Suns 3 for the iPhone and iPad brings the two together.

Distant Suns 3 has all of the astronomical goodness of Distant Suns 2, but takes things to the next level.

No longer should you settle software that keeps you on the ground, when you can soar out into the heavens and glide over Saturn’s rings, investigate the mottled surface of Io in orbit around Jupitier, or ride along with Phobos gazing down on the dusty plains of Mars.

New to Distant Suns 3:

• Spaceflight mode takes you out to the planets and their moons
• From earth, the planets are no longer mere colored dots, they now show their spheres and moons as they would look through a telescope.
• Shows current weather patterns on the earth updated every 3 hours.
• Lock your eye-point on any of the planets or the moon, scroll through time and watch the dance of their moons, or the changing phases.
• May UI enhancements
• Added many more named stars

Features include:

• Compass aware for the 3GS. Just aim at it a the sky and see what you’re looking at!
• Over 130,000 pinpoint stars scintillating like diamond dust in the palm of your hand
• Realistic ghostly band of the Milky Way
• All 88 constellations with images and articles on their mythology
• Preference panel to change the way stars are rendered in over a dozen different ways.
• The Messier catalog of galaxies,  and star clusters
• Dozens of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope
• All 8 planets (Pluto is optional) • GPS aware
• Red interface to preserve your night vision
• What’s Up? Gives a quick one snapshot overview of where all of the important stuff is
• Landscape panoramas from observatories to ancient Greek ruins
• Easy one-handed operation.
• Point and Identify mode reveals a wealth of hidden data for each star, planet or deep-sky object

The Universe just got, well…uh…”smaller.”

Distant Suns 2

Why settle for eye-candy when you can settle for mind-candy?

In 1987 Distant Suns first put the universe on your desktop. In 2009 it puts the universe in your shirt pocket. Originally started in 1985, is has become one of most venerable software titles around. Sporting a database of over 130,000 stars, along with nebula and galaxies, Distant Suns has earned the reputation of both having one of the most realistic displays of the night sky, while being one of the easiest to use astronomy programs available for the most casual sky watchers and serious astronomers alike.

• CNet/Revision 3 Video Review
• TUAW
• 5 Stars from ituneappreviews.com
  
• 5 Stars in iphoneapplicationlist.com
• 4 Stars from AppVee.com
• Chicago Tribune

Features include:

• Compass aware for the 3GS. Just aim at it a the sky and see what you’re looking at!
• Over 130,000 pinpoint stars scintillating like diamond dust in the palm of your hand
• Realistic ghostly band of the Milky Way
• All 88 constellations with images and articles on their mythology
• Preference panel to change the way stars are rendered in over a dozen different ways.
• The Messier catalog of galaxies, nebula and star clusters
• Dozens of photos from the Hubble Space Telescope
• All 8 planets (Pluto is optional) • GPS aware
• Red interface to preserve your night vision
• What’s Up? Gives a quick one snapshot overview of where all of the important stuff is
• Landscape panoramas from observatories to ancient Greek ruins
• Easy one-handed operation.
• Point and Identify mode reveals a wealth of hidden data for each star, planet or deep-sky object

The Universe just got, well…uh…”smaller.”

Grand Tour

As reviewed in:

• TUAW
• Chicago Tribune

Ever wanted to soar over Saturn’s rings, or wheel around through the moons of Jupiter?

In the 60s NASA developed an ambitious plan to explore the outer planets, and called it The Grand Tour. Later known as the Voyager missions, they would turn into some of the most successful missions in NASA’s history. Those journeys turned tiny flickering points in the sky, to places; real places that we had just visited. And now you can visit those same places, whenever you like.

Replicating the solar-system, and its major moons in stunning detail, Grand Tour will let you zip about the solar-system at will and see the sights as they would look like at this very moment.

• View the planets and their moons from any angle with a simple flick of your finger.
• Planetary positions calculated and updated continuously
• Real-time cloud images for the earth, updated every 3 hours.
• Constellation names and outlines
• Animate the motions of other worlds forward or backwards.
• Detailed descriptions of each world.
• List of experiments.
• Grand tour is perfect for us lazy astronomers who want to skim across the surface of the moon without leaving the jacuzzi. So next time work gets boring, take a quick trip to Mars and see what Phobos is up to.

Weather Planet

Weather Planet-A slightly cooler way to look at the same old weather.

• Realistically displays the earth from thousands of miles up in space
• Uses current weather satellite images for constantly updated cloud cover.
• Watch the seasons change as the snow cover drifts south in the winter and recedes during the summer
• Select from thousands of cities and towns.
• Label the constellations in background
• Jump out to the moon for a look back at our home-world
• News alerts bring up to date info on weather, astronomy and space events.