Bhagol: Indian Sky Map

Alok Mandavgane

Contains ads

About this app

Point your phone at the sky and Bhagol names what you are looking at — in the sky's own Indian vocabulary.

Not a Western star chart with Sanskrit labels bolted on. Bhagol draws the 27 nakshatras where the source texts put them, the Rashi Chakra against the real stars, and the nine grahas including Rahu and Ketu — the sky as Indian astronomy has described it for three thousand years, over the same stars you can walk outside and see.

THE INDIAN SKY
• The 27 nakshatras, each marked at its junction star (yogatara)
• The Rashi Chakra — the ecliptic with its 27 divisions and all 108 pada syllables, drawn sidereally against the real stars, following your chosen ayanamsa
• The nine grahas: the Sun, the Moon, the five visible planets, and the lunar nodes Rahu and Ketu
• The horizon with the eight directions, the Lagna where the ecliptic rises, and the Madhya Lagna where it crosses the meridian
• Gol Yantra — the reference circles an armillary sphere is built from: the meridian, the prime vertical, the six o'clock circle and the two colures

WHAT THE TEXTS ACTUALLY SAY
Tap a star and Bhagol shows you the verse it is named in. The Surya Siddhanta on which star of a group is the junction star; the Satapatha Brahmana on Rohini; Patanjali using Krittika and Rohini as his example of a compound. Each with its Devanagari or IAST, a published translation, and the edition it came from — so a name is a citation, not an assertion.

Seventeen of the 27 nakshatra positions were re-seated against those sources rather than inherited unchecked. Ardra sits on Betelgeuse, where Burgess reads the Surya Siddhanta, not thirteen degrees away on Alhena.

THE SKY IN ITS OWN LANGUAGES
Sanskrit is not the only Indian sky. Bhagol carries 975 star names in 57 languages of South Asia — Tamil, Marathi, Santali, Gondi, Mizo, Sindhi, Kolami and fifty more — each graded by how it is used: the language's ordinary word, a folk name, a tribal name, or one borrowed from Sanskrit. Choose the languages you want and the sky is lettered in them.

They do not all see the same figures. Ursa Major is a cot with three thieves behind it across the mainland, and something else entirely in the north-eastern hills. Orion is a plough or a carried beam almost everywhere — except among the Pardhi, who still live by hunting, and who see three deer with two dogs behind them. Every name carries the source it was recorded in.

THE REST OF THE SKY
• 2,500 stars to naked-eye magnitude, and the 88 modern constellation figures
• The Milky Way, drawn as the band it actually is rather than a label
• The Messier catalogue — 110 galaxies, nebulae and star clusters
• Meteor shower radiants, drawn only when their shower is actually running, dimmed for the ten days before it starts
• A gallery of NASA and Hubble images, each one findable in the sky

HOW IT WORKS
• Auto mode follows where you point; manual mode lets you drag, pinch and twist the sky by hand
• Time travel — run the sky forward or back, or jump to any date, and everything follows
• Search any star, graha, nakshatra or constellation and fly to it
• Names in Sanskrit, in English, or both together — "Vyadha (Sirius)"
• Night mode for dark-adapted eyes, and a compass calibration screen when the phone loses north

Bhagol carries its own astronomy and its own star catalogue. It needs no network, no account and no sign-in, and it works anywhere on Earth, on any date.

The Hindi interface appears automatically on a device set to Hindi.

Bhagol is the app that Indian Sky Map became: same maker, same listing, rebuilt.

Ratings and reviews

Before directly entering into the sky map....it is better to give an brief introduction about that app...for what purpose it is....& For what we install this app...and what the contents in it... And Make that whole matter ...into various regional languages.......then this app gets very huge response than now... Superb... but illiterate's cannot understand what the inside ...happening while rotating the device ....so give brief intro...in some lang.'s like...English,Telugu,Kannada, Tamil,Malayalam....etc.,

Dear Mr. Alok, A great application. The toggle between the Roman and Devanagari script is most appreciated. A rightly calibrated phone with the required sensors should solve many problems faced in using the app. My best wishes to you for your efforts. K. Balaji Bengaluru.

When I open the app thru "Hindu Calendar" the search option is briefly visible. Otherwise neither the Search nor the Setting menu is visible. Love this app. But please fix this issue ASAP. Using RealMe2 Pro with ColorOS

What’s new

Indian Sky Map is now Bhagol, rebuilt from the ground up.

• All 27 nakshatras at their junction stars, 17 re-seated from the texts
• Tap a star for the verse it is named in, with its translation
• Sky languages: 975 star names in 57 South Asian languages
• The Rashi Chakra and its 108 pada syllables, drawn sidereally
• Rahu and Ketu among the nine grahas, and the Gol Yantra
• Time travel to any date; search flies you there
• Hindi on a Hindi phone
• Your place and sensor settings carry over