Tapping the telescope icon from the home page brings up a list of what’s visible from your location on a particular night - usually the day you’re using it, though you can flip back and forth in the calendar. Tap one of the objects and you’ll be taken to its information page, where a simple set of symbols tells you whether you can see it with the naked eye, binoculars, or a telescope.Ī simple breadcrumb system along the bottom of the pages allows you to go back to either the search page or the map with a single tap. There's trending information about recent astronomical phenomena, things like the most recent meteor showers and conjunctions. The magnifying glass opens up the search functionality, but its page is much more than just a box to be typed into. These are a magnifying glass, telescope, calendar, and three lines. To go deeper into the app, you need to use one of four icons displayed along the bottom edge of the map, just above the location information. The white on blue map (there’s a much redder night mode) and minimalist artwork show the night sky extremely well, and it’s easy to spend time watching satellites drift across the points of the constellations and asterisms, or hunting out the objects with interesting stories attached to them. It’s also duplicated elsewhere, in apps such as Google Sky Map and the dev’s own Star Walk 2. This basic functionality is supremely easy to use. Tap the icon again when it looks like a camera aperture, and your device’s camera is activated, allowing you to point it at a bright point in the night sky to identify it. This mode makes it easier to zoom into the map to an object that interests you, tapping on it to bring up information such as distance, brightness, and any lore attached to it. Tap the compass button in the bottom right, and the motion tracking is disabled, so you can pan the map around with your finger.