Astro Gold for iPad

Astro Gold is a mobile star atlas and stargazing tool, for use with telescopes, binoculars, or the naked eye. Our app provides a wealth of celestial objects and data. Astro can automatically track the movement of your device, allowing you to quickly orient yourself to your local sky. The compass, accelerometer, and gyroscope of your device is used with the GPS and clock, to display your local sky with colorful and accurate graphics.

Whether youre an amateur astronomer with a only your naked eye, or a seasoned amateur astronomer with a 20-inch homemade Dobsonian, youll find Astro Gold to be a fascinating and useful tool for celestial navigation.

With Astro Gold, get access to all of the following tools and data:

◆ 2,471,282 stars, including:

√ The entire Hipparcos catalog
√ The entire Tycho-2 catalog
√ The entire Gliese catalog of nearby stars
√ 90% completeness to 11.5 magnitude
√ 99% completeness to 11.0 magnitude
√ Spectral classes and distances for over 100,000 stars
√ Color information for all 2.4 million stars
√ Perfect for starhopping with binoculars or a telescope

◆ 9,479 deep sky objects, including:

√ The complete Messier catalog
√ 7,424 items from the New General Catalog (NGC)
√ 482 items from the Index Catalog (IC)
√ 123 open clusters from the Collinder catalog
√ 141 dark nebulae
√ 5 quasars

◆ All 8 planets of our solar system:

√ Ephemerides calculated using the NASA / JPL DE404 model
√ Rotational axes, including precession and nutation, calculated using NASA / JPL models
√ Vital statistics, including radii, rotational periods, and periods of revolution
√ Surface feature maps for Mercury, Venus and Mars

◆ Several constellation sets to explore:

√ All 88 constellations defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU):
√ Official borders, as defined by Eugène Joseph Delporte in 1930
√ Three Western constellation line sets, as defined by H.A. Rey in his book "The Stars: A New Way to See Them" (1952), Alan MacRobert, and a set of Classical lines
√ All 159 classical Chinese constellations

◆ A total of 179 natural satellites (moons), of the planets of our solar system, as well as all four of Plutos moons:

√ Moons and their orbits are updated automatically on a regular basis
√ Surface feature maps are included for 27 moons, including Earths Moon and Charon, the moon of Pluto

◆ A database of the 107 brightest minor planets in the solar system:

√ Including Pluto, with a map of its surface features as explored by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015
√ Including Ceres and Vesta, with surface feature maps
√ Including the 9 largest and brightest trans-Neptunian objects

◆ A database of 100 important comets:

√ Halley, Encke, Hale-Bopp, among others

◆ An up-to-date database of the brightest visible satellites and launch debris:

√ Including important objects such as the International Space Station (ISS), and Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
√ Iridium flare notifications can be scheduled to alert you when a flare occurs at your location
√ All visible satellites brighter than absolute magnitude 3.0 (at 1000km distance, fully illuminated)
√ Satellite positions calculated using the NASA / NORAD SGP4 model
√ Orbits automatically updated
√ Visibility reminders can be set, to alert you with a notification when they become visible at your location

◆ A database of 72 meteor showers

√ Reminders can be set for meteor shower peaks

◆ A database of 1,781 known exoplanets

√ Including known properties, such as diameters, orbital periods, and orbital distances from parent stars

◆ A configurable field-of-view circle overlay, as well as a telrad overlay, to help with orientation while star-hopping to those faint nebulae, galaxies, and asteroids.

All of these features make Astro Gold a must-have app for your astronomical toolkit!

▶ Happy Stargazing! ◀