The Astronomy Virtualisation

It's difficult to not feel like dreamers when looking up at the night sky. Unless you're kicking it in the big smoke ... or anywhere that has a street light. That's because of light pollution. But you can freely defeat light pollution with a laptop, smartphone or tablet. I'm not talking about hacking the government, I'm talking of virtual astronomy. Below are three of the best methods of astronomy virtualisation.

Sky Map

This app's available on Google Play, hence it's for Android. When pointing it at the stars, it can feel a little bit "shaky", but it's got all the basic astronomy kicks to get you spinning. If you can see the stars in real life, Sky Map is a good way to check out what you're looking at, then you can say to someone: "Your eyes are brighter than Sirius... it's that one there", or something rubbish like that.

Sky Map.

Stellarium

This one's free for Mac, Windows and Linux and can be downloaded from the Stellarium website. Some planetariums actually use this program. It's really nice to be able to see what the universe looks like from another planet's perspective. But the best bit is going in spaceship mode and take yourself to the Moon and back.

Mars as the Mars Rover sees it, according to Stellarium.

Planetarium

This post is being written on a Chromebook, a machine which won't run either Sky Map or Stellarium. So as an alternative, you can use the Planetarium website. You may expect to have to log-in to the website, but you don't, you just load the page. It's also available as a Google Chrome extension. Planetarium is like Sky Map - straight up and simple.

Screenshot of the Planetarium website (set at a random date).

Of Interest:

Horrendous astronomy pick-up lines (where the "brighter than Sirius" one was found):
http://tehcip.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/astronomy-pick-up-lines/