AstroAid for iPad
I previously posted about AstroAid, my first “commercial” iOS app for the iPhone. Now I have completed the iPad part of things. Conveniently, you can get a bunch more stuff on screen compared to the iPhone. Some pictures…
{ Monthly Archives }
June 2012
Observability
A frequently-requested AstroPlanner feature is some kind of indication as to when the best time to observe a particular object would be. This would take into account many values, such as the altitude of the object, the phase of the moon, whether the moon is up, and how far from the moon the object is, etc. Enter the Observability value for an object.
AstroAid
I am working on a new iOS app (and my first “real” app on that platform) called AstroAid. I’m using this app to get some practice developing iOS apps, and to discover how to do many things, like creating a universal app (running on both iPhone/iPod Touch and iPad) and publishing it via the Apple App Store (many hoops to jump through). While app is relatively simple, it’s not trivial, and I believe will be of some use to amateur astronomers.
Object Properties vs. Time
If you look at the object list in AstroPlanner, you will see a whole bunch of properties associated with those objects. Some of those properties remain constant over time (for non-solar-system objects, e.g. Magnitudes, RA/Dec coordinates, etc.), while other properties vary with the passage of time (e.g. Altitude, hour angle, parallactic angle, etc.).Â
It’s difficult to see how these latter properties change over, say, the course of an observing session. For some purposes, especially if you’re an astroimager, it’s important to know what those changes are. Enter a new feature to help with this kind of visualisation.