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Stars review

Mark Mackay

We review Stars, a standalone iPhone application that shows the 88 constellations of the night sky in a two-dimensional format

Stars is an iPhone app that displays all the constellations in the sky

Published on Mar 2, 2010

Humans used to use the stars for navigation and so their position was common knowledge.

These days, however, such information is more of a hobby or academic pursuit which can translate into high prices in the App Store. Stars is a free map of the stars which illustrates the location of the 88 constellations that we’ve named in the sky.

The premise of Stars is extremely simple. The stars are shown on a black background – as you might expect – with the constellations picked out in blue.

While is may seem obvious to opt for this colour scheme, it might have actually been easier to have the background white and the stars picked out in black, as the labels and lines are difficult to read on the dark background, a fact that isn’t helped by the reflective surface of the iPhone screen.

As you flick around the stars, you can see a dotted green line which indicates the celestial equator. This is the area of the sky that can be found directly above earth’s equator as it spins away.

Slightly to an angle of the celestial equator is the ecliptic which is the path that the sun follows, around the planet – though essentially, it is of course the other way round. The red is particularly tricky to pick out on the back ground.

To say that Stars was a no-bells-and-whistles app would be something of an understatement. A zoom feature for example would be great. However, the fact is that is delivers on what it promises in the item description in the app store which is more than can be said for a lot of other apps.

The real downside for Stars though is that apps such Planets do its job a lot better and are also free.

If you need a quick positional reference for the constellations, then you could do a lot worse that Stars and if sky gazing is something you’re into in general, then it could be worth a look considering it’s free.