When astrophysicists point their telescopes at the universe, iPhone and iPod touch users can now gaze with them using the Museum's new app, Cosmic Discoveries. The app features nearly a thousand images of everything from the pockmarked surface of Mercury to the majestic Horsehead Nebula. Culled from the Museum's archives and Science bulletins as well as dozens of space agencies and observatories around the world, the photos have been stitched together on the apps opening screen to form a mosaic of the gas giant Saturn and its rings. Read more
A new application called "Transient Events," developed by the UA's Catalina Sky Survey, in collaboration with the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, will provide a real-time data stream on dynamic celestial objects directly to an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Known as transient objects, they vary in terms of brightness or position relative to the night sky and can be anything from asteroids to comets to supernovae. Read more
Imagine holding the entire sun in the palm of your hand. Now you can. A new iPhone app developed by NASA-supported programmers delivers a live global view of the sun directly to your cell phone. Users can fly around the star, zoom in on active regions, and monitor solar activity. The name of the app is "3D Sun" and it may be downloaded free of charge at Apple's app store. Read more
Carina Software at Macworld 2010 showed off several of its astronomy products geared for iPhones and Macs. The company offers SkyVoyager, a popular astronomy app for the iPhone, along with the SkyFi adapter that converts Wi-Fi signals into serial communication. Used together, the products allow users to easily control their GoTo-enabled telescope directly from the iPhone interface. Read more
NASA has updated its popular and free self-titled iPhone app. Version 1.1 of NASA App sports new features and enhancements aimed at improving your earth-bound observation of space. Read more
Apple has taken one giant step by launching a truly out-of-this-world application for its iPhone. The free Nasa app, also compatible with the iPod Touch, enables users to stay in touch with any space project. Read more
Space Object Locator Track the Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory on your iPhone simultaneously. With descriptive text about each object, you can always find each of these objects positions in the sky right in the palm of your hand.
Galaxy Physics in your pocket! Galaxy Collider gives you the universe in your pocket. So brace yourself for the collision of the Milky Way with the Andromeda Galaxy! Galaxy Collider simulates the physics of interacting galaxies by computing the gravitational forces between the stars and the heavy galaxy centers. Galaxy collider features a high performance particle engine that can interactively visualize spectacular galaxy interactions. It uses OpenGL point sprites for rendering thousands of high-quality stars at high frame rates. The parameters of the simulation, such as the number of galaxies and stars, masses, etc. can be changed interactively to explore the infinite number of possible interactions between the galaxies. Galaxy collider uses the build-in accelerometer of IPhone or IPod touch to change viewpoints add real external forces to the simulation.