Monthly Archives: August 2013

astronomy, astronomy apps

Having your Own Personal Astronomer

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In the Palm of your Hand

A screenshot of a Starmap Media story. Courtesy Star-map.fr
A screenshot of a Starmap Media story. Courtesy Star-map.fr

For the past year I’ve been working on a “super secret” project that appealed to me the minute I heard about it. It combines stargazing, storytelling, and iPhone/iPad technology. Now that the project is going “live” I can give you a sneak peek. It’s a free app called Starmap Media, a stand-alone version of the Starmap line of astronomy apps available  in  the iTunes Store.

Imagine you want to go outside and look up at the stars and use a handy reference that explains to you what it is you’re seeing. Sure, you can take a star chart out there with you, or a book. Or, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you can use a program like standard Starmap (available also in two other editions:  StarMap Pro and Starmap HD) to pull up views that match the sky for your time and location, look up deep-sky objects, search out constellations, satellites, and much more.

I first ran across Starmap when the developer contacted me about a year ago with a cool idea—creating narrated and animated star stories for the app. The stories would be keyed to a user’s time and location, and would point out constellations, deep-sky objects, and describe the mythology of the constellations, and talk about the basic science surrounding various celestial objects. It would be like having your own personal astronomer standing there with you, giving you a tour of the sky.

Well, that concept resonated with me quite a bit because it’s right up my alley: creating star stories to teach people about the universe. I’ve done it my entire career through my books, through the many planetarium and fulldome shows I’ve written, the online videos I’ve created, and several times a year I teach about astronomy on board cruise ships.

The developer—a very energetic guy named Frédéric Descamps—and I discussed the possible stories to be told using Starmap Media. And,  really, the sky is full of GREAT stories. So, I got to work writing them. Frédéric engaged a team of artists and a narrator, and together we all spent the past year putting together more than thirty great star tours for Northern Hemisphere skygazers.

The app has just been released this week, and the first two stories are free for download: a tutorial and a comprehensive “Sky Tonight” story that walks and talks you through Northern Hemisphere sky sights to be seen from your location throughout the year.  There are 28 other stories available for in-app purchase at $0.99 each.

To celebrate the release, Frédéric is giving away a free telescope plus personalized assistance to one lucky winner. (If you want to sign up for the drawing and you have a Facebook account, simply visit and like the Starmap App page, and enter your name and email address. The drawing will take place when the page reaches 3,000 likes.)

I’m really pretty excited about Starmap Media and not just because I wrote and worked with the team to produce the stories. I like the original Starmap app very much—it’s one of the finest examples of a mobile stargazing app that I’ve seen (and I’ve played with dozens of them since I got my iPhone). The idea of bringing the sky with you wherever you go is very appealing, and I think the Starmap Media stories add a whole new dimension to skygazing, whether you’re a pro, a beginner, or somewhere in between. In particular, I see many great ways that educators and outreach professionals could use this built-in storytelling capability in Starmap for classroom use, with science center and planetarium visitors, at astronomy club meetings, and for youth groups (such as the Girl and Boy Scouts).

This has been a very cool project to work on, and I’m pleased to be associated with it! You can read more details about Starmap and Starmap Media, and survey the array of stories we’ve created, all on the Starmap Web page. Enjoy!

astronomy

Kepler’s Once and Future Mission

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Wheeling to a Halt

The Kepler spacecraft measured differences in brightness of a star as its planets passed between us and the star. Courtesy NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech
The Kepler spacecraft measures differences in brightness of a star as its planets pass between us and the star. Courtesy NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech

Yesterday, the Kepler mission team and NASA announced that the spectacular planet-discovery spacecraft is un-repairable. The news is not unexpected, but scientists and engineers had been working to find ways to stabilize the spacecraft and continue on its world-finding expedition.  Here’s what happened: two of its four gyroscopic reaction wheels failed. Since the spacecraft’s high pointing accuracy depends on having a stable platform, any wobble induced by failing gyros would make it impossible to accurate measure light from distant stars and analyze it for the existence of planets—particularly the Earth-size ones it was built to find.

The spacecraft is, for planet-searching purposes, dead in the water. But, it’s not a dead telescope.  Its instruments are still working and there are still ways it can be used to do other kinds of observational science provided the other reaction wheels don’t fail and thrusters can be used to keep the spacecraft stable. If that works out, Kepler would enter what engineers are calling a “two-wheel” mission that might include certain kinds of exoplanet searches that don’t require the extreme stability that four wheels provide.

Kepler completed its primary mission last November and had just entered its extended four-year mission when the gyroscope problems became unmanageable.  The mission has been spectacularly successful, giving us new looks at planets ranging from super-Earths to super-Jupiters. Those are words that have entered our language, defining new worlds and opening up ideas for further explorations to find signs of life on worlds where it could have arisen and evolved.  Kepler has confirmed the existence of 135 planets around other stars. At least 3,500 planet “candidates” await confirmation from continued observations by ground-based observatories.  And, the team expects hundreds, if not thousands, of new discoveries are lurking in the data sets including finding evidence of  more Earth-size planets that orbit in the habitable zone of Sun-like stars.

The Kepler mission has been an incredible success. Sure, it’s disappointing to see its gyros fail, but working in space is a tough environment for spacecraft. And, to paraphrase a familiar phrase from a Monty Python movie: It’s not dead yet. I hope that its team will find ways to use the spacecraft to aid in other astronomical and astrophysical observations. It’s a marvelous machine, and we can still get some good bang for the buck out of it in other ways.