

The Hubble Blew My Mind - friism
http://blog.wekeroad.com/2011/10/25/the-hubble-blew-my-mind

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ilamont
What a great story. I am going to get this app as well to enjoy with my kids.

But I am also thinking about how serendipitous and articulate recommendations
like this point to the inadequacies of the app store discovery process. It
really takes more than categories, top 25 lists, search, and star ratings to
find some niche gems.

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robconery
I think Star Walk is up there in terms of top apps - most people I know have
it installed on their phones and iPads. It's a sensational application.

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WA
Do you know how it works? I mean, how can the camera even see the stars?
Usually, the lense must be open for quite a while to take a picture of the
night sky, no?

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palish
It doesn't need a camera...

iPhone knows your latitude and longitude --- your position on the surface of
the Earth. It also knows the location of each star. Lastly, it knows which way
your screen is pointing.

That's all the knowledge that's needed in order to display a starfield on the
screen.

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WA
Thanks. I thought it would process the data on screen just like this augmented
reality translation app (forgot the name). But this approach is really
interesting. I need to check the app out :)

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hebejebelus
You're thinking of Word Lens. <http://questvisual.com/>

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icebraining
_we're connected to WiFi so why shouldn't the app know this?_

Actually, it doesn't need Internet connection. Hubble, like any other
satellite, has a well known orbit, so you can calculate its position.

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hospadam
"Secondly - and most importantly - my daughter told me the answer. This might
sound weird if you don't have kids - but for your kid to know the answer to
something you genuinely don't know - that's really special for them."

You know, I'm not a parent yet - but I'm excited about this feeling. I can
still remember the few times it happened when I was a child - and _that_ blew
my mind back then.

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cjfont
To me it seems the article should be better titled "My daughter blew my mind",
since his reaction seems to be more centered around his daughter getting the
answer before he did.

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tptacek
You really don't get how cool Star Walk is until you actually use it,
preferably with kids.

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soitgoes
Stellarium (<http://www.stellarium.org/>) is pretty good too. I've only used
it on Windows and Linux, but there is Stellarium XL for the iPad.

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DanBC
Stellarium is very good. The difference is that StarWalk uses accelerometers
and GPS to provide augmented reality - you hold the iPhone / iPad up and point
it at a constellation and the display shows what you're looking at.

Stellarium (at least, when I was using it) does not do this.

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theoj
I guess it really depends on your experience... if it's something you had no
idea could be done before then it's a huge leap and you are bound to be
impressed. If it's something for which you've seen earlier iterations, then
the leap is much smaller and much less impressive.

I'm in the smaller leap -- not so impressed category. I used to do a fair bit
of satellite watching about 10-14 years ago. Back then it was old skool --
download satellite orbit data from the web, feed it to a computer program, get
the viewing opportunities (aka predictions), print the predictions on paper
and then go outside with the paper to enjoy the show. At that time there were
also programs that simulated orbit passes -- you could see whether a satellite
was above the horizon day or night realtime -- but only at your desk on the
computer. The thing that was missing was the portability factor that now makes
the experience real-time.

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StavrosK
I'm amazed at people who are stupefied by software's ability to know where the
stars are today, without any external sensors. They have known trajectories,
it's trivial to calculate the position.

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Nick_C
Well, I don't know if I would say it's trivial. Geocentric is fairly easy,
topocentric (which is what we want), not so much. Especially when you have to
start factoring in local time. And then people start wanting to change the
time to a few thousand years in the past and now you have to factor in
nutation and drift and ....

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steve8918
Great story, and great advertisement for that app! I just went out and paid
$2.99 for the app, and I'll use it the next time I'm far enough from the city
to actually see stars :)

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ctdonath
My grandfather on his great-grandchildren: "poor kids will grow up thinking
computers are normal."

Indeed. One of my daughter's first words was "iPad".

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mturmon
It's fun to see ISS (space station) as it flies over. You can go to lots of
places, like

<http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/index.html>

to find good nights to watch. Usually right around sunset local time. Look for
the longer durations and higher elevations.

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mershad
Every time I see an image Hubble captures, it blows my mind.

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hackDaily
Just bought this app about a week ago and have been amazed ever since. It's
surreal how you can travel back and forth through time and see the cosmos
unfold.

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hugh3
I was thinking just the other day that something like this should exist. I'm
happy to know that it does.

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drivebyacct2
Google Sky Map is cool too for Android. :)

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kefs
It surprises me how many Android users don't know about this great free Google
app...

[https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.sta...](https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.stardroid)

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drivebyacct2
It was an "original" per say too. It's quite impressive. It sold at least one
phone, my mom made the smartphone leap because of it and free texting with
Gvoice.

I can remember my Dad showing me how we could pull up the hubble tracker via
dialup. Now, it's anywhere.

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borism
People have mentioned a lot of great apps here for both Android and iOS.

What they forget is that all those apps get their information from somewhere
and a lot of it is coming from hobbyists and amateur astronomers putting it up
on <http://www.heavens-above.com> and SeeSat mailing list for free (yes, a lot
of space-celebs like Hubble and ISS have a known orbit, but those guys have
catalogued virtually every object launched by humans, including many top-
secret satellites).

Just thought it is appropriate to give respect where respect is due.

