Skymag is a planetarium software with high usability and informativeness.
Features:
− zoomable from 0.5x to 1024x
− 275.000 stars up to 10 magnitudo
− 4.400 deep sky objects (galaxies, nebulae and other) up to 13 magnitudo
− more than 500 pictures of nebulae
− 305 millions stars up to 18 magnitudo downloadable from internet (Gaia catalog, above 64x zoom, partially paid in-app supplement)
− real pictures of the sky downloadable from internet (SDSS database, above 64x zoom)
− 73.000 galaxies up to 19.8 mag downloadable from internet (PGC catalog, above 64x zoom)
− all variable stars brighter than 9 mag with amplitude exceeding 0.5 mag
− all double stars brighter than 9 mag with separation exceeding 0.5"
− moons of Jupiter and Saturn
− all asteroids brighter than 10 mag and dwarf planets despite their brightness
− all meteor showers
− all discovered comets brighter than 10 mag
− paths of all Solar System objects up to 360 days
− 3D projections of space with object highlighting, including:
- Solar System with planetary motions
- nearby stars with proper motions (up to 170 light years)
- Milky Way with surroundings
- The Local Supercluster (up to 98 million light years)
− genuine Almanac with most major and minor astronomical events between 1 and 4000 year AD (throughout the year) with notifications (offline), including:
- times of sunrises, sunsets, beginnings and endings of twilight
- times of rises, transits and sets for 4 phases of the Moon
- times of apogees, perigees, nodes and maxima of librations (east, west) of the Moon
- visibility of the Moon above the horizon
- times of rises, transits and sets of all planets
- times of conjunctions, oppositions, close groups of all planets
- times of maximum brightness and elongations of inner planets
- eclipses of the Sun and Moon
- transits of inner planets on the Sun
- times of equinoxes and solstices
- times of peaks of all meteor showers
- morning and evening alignments with more than 2 planets
− Almanac with passes on sky and transits on Sun and Moon of bright artificial satellites with notifications (online, partially paid in-app supplement)
− additional Almanac for selected objects from internal catalogs
− 23.000 Wikipedia articles with pictures and searchable dictionary (offline, partially paid in-app supplement)
− Star Map Maker that creates PDF files for printing purposes (online, paid in-app supplement), features:
- vectorized drawings with unlimited resolution
- for a given view of the sky (for every time and location)
- possibility of writing custom texts and QR codes
- extensive configuration options
- examples: www.weibarlab.com/apps/skymag/star-map-maker-examples/
− solar and lunar analemma (offline, paid in-app supplement)
− night (red) mode with brightness adjustment
− atlas mode, like paper one
− catalogs of all objects with search functionality (click and go to)
− pointing at sky using device sensors
− GPS positioning, manually either (remember to set up place first)
− even more
Hints:
− touch coordinates to change them, touch scale number to return to 1x, touch 'AUTO' button to use sensors
− size of downloaded data can vary between 10KB to 8MB per request (average ~200KB). Downloading and viewing additional fields can be done above scale 64x by pressing 'SkyView', 'gaia' and 'Galaxies' buttons
− when you change location, remember to set time zone by pressing button beneath
− some astronomical events from Almanac like Sun eclipses with Moon and inner planets may differ several minutes depends on geographic location, single-check with map should help
− to capture satellites transits on Sun and Moon, make sure downloaded orbital elements are no older than 2 weeks
− in App permissions allow Notifications, uncheck 'Pause app activity if unused' and turn off battery optimization for that app. Some manufacturers are blocking local offline notifications, then app must be in foreground/background