Jul. 22nd, 2020

thewayne: (Default)
It is called, cleverly enough, CometNEOWISE. And it's free, both in cost and in adverts!

It's one of those star map programs that uses the phone's GPS/compass/accelerometers to know how you're pointing the phone. I don't know if you must have a cell signal to use it, but you would probably benefit from knowing where the northwest portion of the sky is. It shows the night sky as black, below the horizon as gray, all the constellations, and the comet itself as a very visible red target. And it uses NASA ephemeris data to tie everything together! Probably a good idea to recalibrate your phone's compass before setting out to use it.

I'll try and post a screen shot tomorrow. I imagine there's a similar app in the Android marketplace, but I don't use that and can't make a recommendation. I use an iPhone 8 with iOS 13.5.1.

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