Sky & Telescope - January 2021 - 31

W The app presents
an attractive and
fairly realistic rendition of the sky and
horizon, with many
options to select a
foreground of your
choice. Below are examples of SkySafari
Pro 6's appearance
on an iPhone 6, while
at left is its look on
an iPad mini. Using
the app on a tablet
gives more room for
text and menu items;
otherwise its performance and content
are the same.

and amazingly smooth, even using older
devices, as I discovered when panning
around the sky on my somewhat elderly
64GB iPhone 6. Using the app on
Android devices is just as good.
Operation of the basic program is
intuitive since it works like most other
smart-device applications. You touch
and drag the sky to navigate, touch to
select objects or menu items, and pinch

S A ribbon menu at the bottom
of the screen allows access to
functions such as setting past
or future dates and times of the
sky display. You can adjust the
limiting magnitude of displayed
objects and stars with sliders in
the Settings menu.

two ﬁngers onscreen to zoom in and
out. Scroll the ribbon-style menu along
the bottom of the screen left to reveal
numerous choices. While the program can be operated in basic fashion
immediately, there are many options
and menus, so there's a bit of a learning
curve. Simulation Curriculum provides
a comprehensive manual on its website
at skysafariastronomy.com.

S There's no lack of stars and
deep-sky objects in Sky Safari Pro
6. Here the app displays 18thmagnitude galaxies in a small area
of the sky. While you can adjust the
limiting magnitude in the Settings
menu, the closer you zoom into a
field, the fainter it will display.

Basic Operation
Despite being packed into a smartphone, this is a big, sprawling program
with many useful features. However,
the place many of us begin when
evaluating astronomy software is, "How
many objects does it have?"
SkySafari Pro 6 is no slouch in that
department, placing more than 100 million stars and 4 million deep-sky objects
at your ﬁngertips. Closer to home, it
includes 770,000 solar system objects -
in addition to the planets, and comets,
the apps database includes every asteroid
with a known orbit, and it adds new
ones as they are conﬁrmed. You can set
the limiting magnitude of the faintest
objects displayed using a slider in the
Settings menu.
Admittedly, most amateur astronomers aren't going to have much use
for 20th-magnitude galaxies or even
dimmer rocks in the solar system. For
most of us, the NGC catalog, brighter
comets, and a few prominent asteroids
are enough. Astrophotographers, however, often like to identify asteroids and

S Searching for objects
returns a lot of information (the
page scrolls down containing
more facts and history), with
additional options like object
centering, and, for more prominent targets, an image and an
audio tour.

S A page of more detailed information is available by swiping
right from the object information
page. This is included in the main
info page when operating the app
on a larger tablet device.

sk yandtelescope.org * JANUARY 2 021

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Sky & Telescope - January 2021

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