Apps for #Stargazing
Planets –
Free – tells you which planets are visible on the night of observing and you
can find their position in the sky by holding up your phone to the planets i.e.
the bright non-twinkling objects.
SkyView – Free –Shows the constellations and planets, but
shows you it in an Augmented reality platform (uses the camera to show you the
planets and constellations on the background your camera sees live) & you
can search for objects by typing them in and then an arrow will point you
toward them.
Star Chart – Free - app that shows the constellations, planets, and
constellation art and gives information on interesting objects in the field of
view
Star Walk 1 or 2 - £2.99 – More powerful than
Star Chart and has more features and more info on objects.
Sputnik! – Free - tell you when the
ISS and other satellites are visible from your location
GoISSWatch – Free – As above but just for the ISS and has cool map showing
you where the ISS is live and will send you notifications when it is overhead.
Night Cap - £0.79 – (low
light) Astrophotography app allows you to take photos of stars, planets and do
stair trails etc but you need to experiment with exposure times and ISO
sensitivity within the app. Can use the iPhone headphone mic as a camera
shutter so you don’t shake the camera when you take long exposures.
Night Cap Pro- £1.49 - As above but has ‘stair trail’ and ‘iss’ options
so it picks the correct exposure and ISO settings for taking pictures of
certain things. Also does video recording.
Free Software for PCs/Macs
Just
‘Google’ the names of these programs and download them to your computer for
free.
Stellarium – Like SkyView and other apps above but very easy to use and
you can type in the date you want to go observing and it will tell you exactly
what the sky is like on that date. So perfect for using to plan a stargazing
evening event and knowing what is visible at what time. It is best to
view/photograph objects when they are directly over head so this is a great way
to view this.
World Wide Telescope – this software can be
downloaded or just the webclient. Shows how the universe is looks when observed
by different telescopes looking at radio through to gamma waves. It has lots of
amazing images from Hubble in the locations of the objects on the sky.
StarStax
–for making star trails or timelapse videos from multiple/burst of images. Just
select all the images you want to use and the software does the rest!
Useful
links
Zooniverse
- https://www.zooniverse.org/
- Many different citizen science projects for YP
to contribute to scientific research online. These include several astronomy-focused
projects like analysing galaxy shapes and finding exoplanets but also many
other projects like observing penguins and plankton.
-Google
‘ keplers tally of planets’ – shows exoplanets that the Kepler telescope has
found and their orbits.
starts with moon and then scales up to largest star (VY Canis Majoris) then
back to Earth
Google
‘nasa retro posters’ – Put up these posters in your centre & use to start
up discussion about planets around other stars, and life on other planets,
maybe get the YP to design their own poster for a newly discovered exoplanet.
There were a variety of other freebies available to passengers such as pens, cloth bags and colouring in sets. 
The activity was funded by a Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) public
engagement small award to see how members of the public who wouldn’t normally
choose to attend science events respond to discussion about astronomy research
in an environment where they would not be expect it. This is also one of the
first attempts to communicate science in an airport departure lounge (beyond
the security gates). 
