PlanetDroid

W. Strickling

About this app

Astronomy ephemeris app for calculating high precision ephemeris and positions of Sun, Moon and the Planets for engaged amateur astronomers and planetary observers, prefering data and facts instead of pretty picture-apps. Planetdroid finds rise, culmination and set times, the beginning of seasons, lunar phases and planetary aspects.

Augmented reality (AR) view: See the positions of planets or comets live on a camera image and search your selected object with your phone!

On the visibility diagram you can see the elevation above the horizon of your selected body (white line) of the current nicht and the elevation of the sun (dark yellow line), as well as the twilight times. The horizontal black line ist the horizon, the vertical red line your selected time.

Since version 3.3 it is possible to save locations offline. The file containing the locations is sdcard/.com.strickling/location.txt. It can be edited with any test editor. To start the editor, simply click menu in the location selection form.

Download elements for asteroids and comets from the internet.
Supports GPS localization.

Calculates (select or deselect different items in the menu):
- time of rise, culmination, set,
- azimut of rise and set
- equatorial right ascension and declination
- ecliptical coordinates and distance
- azimut an elevation
- equation of time, true local time, sidereal time
- diameter, brightness, central meridian, position angle of the axis
- for comets and asteroids: motion velocity and direction
- Civil, nautical and astronomic twilight
- begin of the seasons, lunar phases, and lunar age
- times of opposition, conjunction and greates elongation for planets.
- time of perihelion for comets


On some devices without front camera Google Play Store will indicate, that Planetdroid is not compatible with your device. The front camera is needed for the augmented reality screen. If you like to install Planetdroid without using augmented reality, please install it from my website: http://www.strickling.net/android_engl.htm#PlanetDroid


Thanks to Mark Huss for his AstroLib containing the VSOP-routines and to the translators Nenad Trajkovic (Serbian), Alfredo Caronia (Italian), IDris a.k.a. MANsur, Ghost-Unit (Russian), Sizhuang Liu (Chinese), M. César Rodríguez (Spanish) and Osama Al Shammari (Arabic).

Required Permissions:
- Hardware controls: Camera. Required for AR. May cause compatibility refusal for devices without front camera. Try installation from my website!
- Exact location: For site-specific calculations eg. rising and setting times.
- Internet Access: Online access to asteroid and comet orbital databases and online selection of an observation site.
- SD card access: Storing orbital elements data, settings and location coordinates for offline search.

More translators are welcome! If you like this app and prefer using it in your language, contact me! Translation is very easy.
Frequent users are asked to purchase the Planetdroid donation version to share the Android market fees.

Bugs or problems found? Please send error report for error loclisation and removal or send an email instead of giving bad ratings!

Ratings and reviews

Always loved this App. The App State is freezing [Date & Time remains unchanged] in Android 12, 13 & 14 even if the App is closed by Back Button. Need to manually remove the App from memory to bring it back to the current date & time. Checked in few Cell phones models. Same outcome. Please fix.

Unlike the plethora of augmented-reality "sky map" apps available, this one seems to be intended for use with a telescope! Usable by amateur astronomers of any level of experience. If you can align your equatorial mount, you will find this app indispensable for viewing planets and minor bodies. It gives you the current celestial co-ordinates of the planet you wish to view, as well as for minor bodies such as the recently-discovered C/2020 F3. Far more useful than any other astronomy/telescope app I've tried.

Top 40% of page is covered up. This app was great, now it's unusable. Alas. Please fix. Thank you.

What's new

V. 6.3.1 Update to meet Google's minimum API 34 requirements. No functional changes.
V. 6.3.0: Meteoblue links in menu, Synchronize favorites, show true illuminated disc, planetoid diameter bugfix.
V. 6.2.0: Update for storage requirements of Android 10 and higher.
Data now stored in Android/data/com.planetdroid/files/