Stargazing-Apps

The fastest way to start finding things in the night sky costs nothing and is already in your pocket. Hold your phone up, and a decent stargazing app will name the bright dot you’ve been squinting at: Arcturus, or Jupiter, or the International Space Station about to clear your roofline. No telescope, no printed atlas, no memorising constellations first. That’s the pitch, and it mostly holds up. The catch is that the app store is stuffed with near-identical star maps, half of them want a subscription, and the headline “just point your phone at the sky” feature breaks in ways nobody warns you about. Here’s how I’d pick one, based on what I actually keep on my phone in Nicosia and hand to friends who’ve never found anything but the Moon. ...