Through the App Store To the Stars: A review of Star Walk.

I'm not an astronomer. I'm not an amateur astronomer. I wouldn't even call myself an amateur stargazer but I do love looking at the night sky -- and during the winter months in New England one has a whole lot of time to appreciate the night sky.

Unfortunately I live in Allston, a district of Boston surrounded too much by city light to see very many stars even on clear nights. Orion's belt and other cosmic landmarks nevertheless manage to make regular appearances. And I have enjoyed some dramatic night-sky moments like the 2011 perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system (aka the supermoon) when an enormous moon hung over the horizon like a ripe blood orange.

The supermoon over Boston, March 19 2011. Lovely, isn't it? And the supermoon is kind of pretty, too.

Recently this past winter I observed a really bright yellow spot of light in the sky that I was pretty sure was unusual. I figured it had to be a planet since there weren't any comets, meteor showers, or other cosmic shenanigans on the books. I couldn't identify it but there it was, rising and setting night after night. And if it looked that bright in Allston, how much brighter must it actually be? Which only added to the mystery.

Soon after I first noticed it, my stepdad and I got iPhones together. My stepdad and I are very much alike, and perhaps we're like you, in that we love neat things -- apps, gadgets, tech, toys. Things that make you say, "That is so cool." So while we waited in the store for our new phones to be activated we checked out  the iPads on display, and that is how we discovered Star Walk.

Star Walk is an app, branded by its maker Vito Technology as an "interactive astronomy guide" for "augmented stargazing."

Okay, really, Vito? That's the best you can do? How about this:

Star Walk lets you cradle the universe in the palm of your hand like a marble.

It's an interactive star map that you navigate with your iPad or iPhone touch screen -- zoom in, zoom out, spin the panoply of stars this way and that until you get dizzy and need to lie down. Tap an object and then tap the information button to learn about it. Search the Star Walk database by name for a specific star, constellation, planet, galaxy, or satellite. Find out what's in the sky right over your head, right this very second. 

"That is so cool," said my stepdad, and I had to agree.

I downloaded Star Walk to my new iPhone that night, and then I went outside and pointed my phone at the sky. The screen immediately transformed into a viewfinder and displayed the sky just as it looked from Earth, but overlaid with a labeled map of everything visible overhead from where I stood in Allston. There was the moon, there was Orion's belt, and there was the big bright yellow thing that had been bugging me for weeks -- it was Venus, and Venus was beautiful.

Venus (bottom) and Jupiter (top) -- not actual sizes, apparently.
Photo credit: John Chumack (by way of Weekly SkyWatcher).

It wouldn't be hyperbole to say that the moment of discovery was breathless and a little giddy. In less than a second Star Walk had oriented itself and mapped out and identified the visible universe as seen from my exact location on Earth. 

All I could say was, "That is so fucking cool."

Star Walk received all sorts of best app awards, including the iPad Developer Showcase 2010 Apple Design Award. It was noted on the Sunday Times App List and Netted by the Webbys. Gizmodo called it "one of the most awesome uses of the iPad's hardware we've seen yet." And according to the Vito Technology web site it's the favorite app of FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, for what that's worth. The important thing is that Star Walk has earned a lot of frothy acclaim.

And deservedly so. Want to know what the night sky will look on your birthday this year? Star Walk will show you. Want to impress people at a cocktail party with cool facts about Betelgeuse? Star Walk will inform you that it's a red supergiant and whose long-ago supernova death could appear to us some time within the next millennium. Want to find out where the International Space Station is? Don't mind if I do, Star Walk, where is it? At the time of this writing it's somewhere through my apartment floor on the other side of Earth, floating around near a southern-sky constellation known as Vela.

Star Walk has also informed me that Vela used to be part of the larger constellation of Argo Navis, shaped like a ship. According to Star Walk Argo Navis is now divided into three smaller constellations: Carina (Latin for 'keel'), Puppis ('poop deck'), and Vela ('sail').

That is so cool.