Pocket Universe: Virtual Sky Astronomy

Cool app

By: Summerluuvin

This is a cool app but it would be awesome if you could search for something like the big dipper or Pluto or whatever and it would point you to it or tell you it's not visible in tonights sky then tell you when it might be visible next.

Fabulous App

By: Bozocity

In absolute terms, this is among the best astronomy apps. In relative terms, at $2.99, it is a best-value, must buy. It is easy to use with an intelligent, respectable feel to it, more like Starmap than Star Walk (if lacking either's progidous data on stars). Real creativity here, a new vision of what a star chart can be. Especially like the feature showing how to find stars by following onscreen arrows (although it is too easy to accidentally clear the arrows by touching the large button in the middle of the screen). Truly spectacular 3-D rendering resolves inherent issues of distortion in fitting a round projection to a flat screen, and it scrolls as fast as promised. Latest version allows tweaking location manually, but is still inadequate. It needs to store several named locations and allow switching between them, like a weather app. Should allow entering exact coordinates for those of us too far from the nearest approximated offering. Should retain the setting until the user changes it to avoid this confusion, rather than display "Automatic" every time Prefs are opened. These problems appear to stem from committing to a roller-wheel interface for selecting from a long list of predefined locations, an awkward interface. Latest update allows hiding dimmer stars by magnitude. This is good, but would be better if it allowed finer gradations. For me, showing 6th magnatude and higher is too much, but 5th is too little. Maybe allow 5.5? Current preferences allow all or no names to display, emptying or cluttering the screen. Better to allow names of constellations, stars, and deep space objects to display separately. One significant disappointment could be fixed in future upgrades: Almost no objects are identified. When one of the few objects with data is dragged into the crosshairs, a bar appears at the top of the display. Tap the bar, and a box with minimal data and a link to Wikipedia appears. Drag the entire sky, and you'll almost never see this box, and when you do see it, no Wiki details are available on iPod touch if you're out of range of WiFi; if you are in range, the slow built-in Web browser goes inexplicably to Wikipedia's main pages instead of its optimized mobile pages.

Fix the compass!!!!!!!

By: iPhonerarooni

This is a nice albeit simple app that is severely handicapped by the very poor compass and tilt accuracy. I would not recommend until these are fixed.

Worked great until update.

By: THE ROZ

I loved this app until the new update, now the tracking doesnt work. :(

Don't buy until new fix

By: mediaCORE

Awesome up until the upgrade, motion is not working anymore.

Amazing yet flawed

By: Dr. Solace

This was an amazing app till the most recent upgrade. The motion tracking does not work properly on the 3GS. Please fix it.

1.7 problem too

By: Taurus9WoodTiger

I'm having the same left to right problem too.

AARRGH

By: TGuida

Same as last reviewer. Really loved this app on my 3GS, updated to 1.7 and now the motion tracking only works up-down. It's as if the software doesn't know its on a 3GS. Please fix ASAP!

Good App

By: Voodoo Chile

This app makes me glad to have bought the iPhone! The navigation is a little confusing, but i like the tilt-nav feature! I recommend this app, but Star Walk is a bit simpler.

Good app, but...

By: GSXRGuy

Great app and good idea. I had full bars (3G) on my iPhone 3gs and noticed the location of objects in the sky were nearly 30 degrees displaced from what this App indicated on screen (used moon as reference). I even "recalibrated" the phones compass (figure 8), still 25-30 degrees off. Nevertheless, great idea and hope to see this fixed in future updates

Not Worth It

By: mrifool

Is not want you expect!..At night it shows a day sky! Also, you will be unable to tell what star or planet you are looking at...isn't that the goal...it will get you in the neighborhood of thousands of other stars.... sorry

Incredible but...

By: P Everett

This is the first review I've ever written after downloading and using dozens of different apps during the last year or so. The potential for pUniverse is awesome but for the fact that it is off by several degrees. I have recalibrated my 3Gs compass according to instructions I have received by the tech support people without any improvement. If they can get this issue resolved I will certainly improve my rating to 5 stars!

Impressive

By: A-dog76

I love the GPS/compass integration so you can point at the sky and it will show you what you're looking at. I have little astronomical knowledge, so commenting as an ignorant hobbyist, it has everything I need to learn more about the sky.

Pretty nice program - but has a problem

By: sOulbAit

I love everything about it except the moving part of it. When you hold it to the sky and move it right or left, it wants to swing in all directions, It will not stay in one place. Then it ask me to do a figure 8 for the compass and I did that, but it still does not help. Can not get the screen to stay in one location, it wants to over swing and underswing. Maybe I am doing somthing wrong, or maybe it will be corrected on the next version. This would be a 4 star if I could get this program to work.

OMG!!! THE BEST!!!!

By: iPod Addicted

I use to print out astrology charts to find the planets and constellations....THIS IS SO MUCH LESS COMPLICATED!!! As long as you remember from the prospective that on Earth And when you face South that West is on your right and East us on your left. AFTER THAT ITS EASY!!! this program will guide you to specific objects planets and constellations. TRULY AWESOME!!!

I love it!!

By: Country Doc

I just got a telescope. Now I can finally figure out what I'm looking at!!

Finally! Awesome

By: ITester

I'm so happy and impress, great interface, now I can do my backyard astronomy easily, love it! Please add more. Must have app, even you do not know about astronomy because you will learn with this tool; how nice is that you look at your local sky during a night and be able to identify sky objects.

Musfeature on iPod Touch?

By: Bozocity

On an iPod Touch in a rural area where WiFi does not support location services and stargazing is often out of range of WiFi, an app must be able to retain manual location settings between launches. Also, it should allow entering exact coordinates for those of us too far from the nearest approximated offering. It's not clear how this program behaves. It may actually retain manual settings between launches, but automatically reset them to "Automatic" upon opening Location preferences. Should retain the setting until the user changes it to avoid this confusion. Better still, should allow storing many locations for easy switching between them, as is common, for example, with weather reporting apps. Needs to be able to hide dimmer stars. The view is too busy when it includes so many stars that are not visible. Real creativity here, a new vision of what a star chart can be. Especially like the feature showing how to find stars by following onscreen arrows (although it is too easy to accidentally clear the arrows by touching the large button in the middle of the screen). Truly spectacular 3-D rendering ideally resolves inherent issues of distortion in fitting a round projection to a flat screen, and yes, it scrolls as fast as promised. Current preferences allow all or no names to display, emptying or cluttering the screen. Better to allow names of constellations, stars, and deep space objects to display separately.

Great application, responsive developer

By: billmcfa

I bought the 1.6 version and just upgraded last night to 1.7. There was a minor glitch in upgrading which was easily corrected. The side to side tracking has stopped working; deleting and reinstalling the app fixed this. The developer was very responsive in working with me to fix the problem and answering other questions I had.

Problem with version 1.7?

By: Buddhamonke

Bought this app today and loved it. Was outside trying the virtual sky an hour ago and it worked great on the 3Gs while moving it up and down and left and right without a problem. Then I get a note to update to 1.7, install it and now the left/right motion of virtual sky is not working. I have to use my finger to pan it back and forth. Up and down still works fine....is there a problem with this last update?:( This app is not 5 stars without that feature.

Amazing!!!

By: Lucud311

I have the 3GS and was waiting "patiently" for the compass update and it was well worth the wait. This is an amazing app that works great. Fun for the whole family. One of my favorite apps and it's a steal at this price. A must have for any iPhone 3GS or not.

Currently Useless on iPod Touch

By: Bozocity

On an iPod Touch in a rural area where WiFi does not support location services and stargazing is often out of range of WiFi, this app is too impracticle to use. It does not retain manual location settings between launches. Having to enter my approximate location with its awkward interface is too annoying to bother with, given the many other astro apps that do retain these settings. Also, it should allow me to enter exact coordinates, because I am far from my nearest approximated offering. If you have an iPhone and are always in range if cellular towers, this problem does not apply to you. Apple, if you are reading, you've *got* to explain to developers not to rely on Location Services! Other great failing is no means to hide dimmer stars, making the view too busy. Lots of potential here. Real creativity; a new vision of what a star chart could be. Especially like the feature showing how to find stars by following onscreen arrows (although it is too easy to accidentally clear the arrows by touching the large button in the middle of the screen). Truly spectacular 3-D rendering ideally resolves inherent issues of distortion in fitting a round projection to a flat screen, and yes, it scrolls as fast as promised. Current preferences allow all or no names to display, emptying or cluttering the screen. Better to allow names of constellations, stars, and deep space objects to display separately. Will happily reevaluate when the urgent misfeatures are fixed. If it remembered manually entered locations and so were useable, would jump to many stars.

Awesome

By: ABassinne

Great app for anyone interested in learning about the night sky. Packed with cool features. Works perfectly on 3G. Well worth the $$.

Suitable for beginners

By: emsmedic1

Very easy to use, but needs to improve accuracy!

The best Astronomy App.

By: Solarmann

I have most of the astronomy apps.,Starmap,Distance Suns etc., but I like this one the best. Besides costing 2 or 3 times less, it has much more useful information , plus astronomy news. The Moon phases and Jupiter moon placement is the best. Wish I had found this sooner, could have saved some money.

Amazing start

By: 976pxpx

Worth the $$, but definitely needs a fix for the overhead screen flip, very annoying - seriously, you're looking at the sky, of course your looking up! Please fix this. I also agree that a night mode must be added.

No night screen

By: Egyptian goddess

This app has lots of potential. However it is missing a VERY important feature; the ability to have the screen in whatever mode to have background, text everything, in 'night view' or red. Right now, dark adaptation is totally wiped out. This feature must be added asop.

Nice... But!

By: Palkoru

I really like it, with my new 3GS. But for beginners it's kinda hard to navigate and figure out how to work this. A detailed TUTORIAL would be helpful please!!! 

Inaccurate!

By: nyseman

Jupiter was in the wrong location (it was shown as a few degrees below the moon where in reality, it was a few degrees to the right of the moon). I verified to make sure the gps got my coordinates/time correctly. After finding that Polaris and the moon were where they should be, i'm sure that this is an error on the software in terms of placing jupiter. Now i'm just waiting till nightfall again to check the accuracy of other planets and stars. The augmented reality is pretty neat. However, i'm sure all of you know how jittery the compass could be. Perhaps it could be smoothed out a bit in the next release along with corrected coordinates for jupiter, otherwise, i would have wasted $2.99.

Stunning, working augmented-reality w/ room for Improvement

By: Mrcoolbp

If you have a 3GS, buy this app now. Augmented reality is here. Even if you don't like astronomy, it is by far the coolest app to show friends, and you'll probably get out to see the stars (and galaxies, nebulae, who knows!) much more often. I would like to see a fix for when viewing directly overhead (switches 180 degrees at a predictable altitude due to the compass), but it's still totally workable by switching briefly to manual.

Where's the moon?

By: Biox

PN needs to display the moon (in its current phase) in virtual reality mode.

a must get for 3gs users

By: Depression dog

works well despite the 3gs compass limitation (a quickie algorythm could detect the compass flick at higher elevations and correct approprietly)... MAJOR style points for LCARS design...

good

By: Bhnu

on the 3gs really interesting, although it sometimes jumps arround erratically, and I didn't like the placement of the manual control. the faux tree night time landscape was irritating in the desert. Imagery from the camera would be more useful.

Love it, but there are a few flaws

By: Static2601

I really like this app on the 3gs, but I'm having a problem with the accuracy. When I point the phone towards the sun, in the app it shows the sun is getting ready to set when it's really a few hours from setting. I checked all the settings and the time was right, I had to back it up 2 or 3 hours to get it right and even then, the sun was off a by direction. Another thing is that when I point the phone up, the compass goes the opposite direction, IE north points south. It does the same thing in the compass app supplied with the phone. I don't know if you can fix this or not but would really make this app nicer to use. Other then those problems, I think this is a really great app and was surprised at how it used the compass to point the direction.

Amazing!!

By: MuxCarey

This is one of the coolest apps out there. The viewing with the compass on the 3GS is awesome! Enjoy!!

pretty sweet

By: 6437z

Accurate enough, augemented reality is trippy, and a sweet lcars design that makes your iPhone feel like a tricorder, yeah this is a nice app

Exellent

By: digitalwarlock

This is an exellent sky app. Everything is broken down nicely. To many nice things about each area of the app. I also like the option to put itouch to sky see whats where! 2 thumbs up! any future updates will make this even more great :)

Perfect!

By: johnSDC

This is one of the coolest apps I've seen. I've always had an interest in astronomy but never studied it. This let's me study it while sitting outside in the night sky. Bravo! Can't wait to try it on a 3GS with compass positioning.

Sweet!

By: tsteng272

Was reluctant to purchase, but glad i did. Excellent app!

Bad!

By: Ghdhgdh

Do not dounload horable app not what they say don't dounload app!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really like it!

By: jim.barr

Ok, so the UI departs from the Apple standards a bit, but this is a really well-done app. Very complete, very accurste, very informative, and very fun to use The only reason I don't give it 5 stars is that I can't figure out how to directly enter location coordinates. Auto locarion got me fairly close but I'd like to be able to manually add nearby cities.

Accuracy

By: rtaylor61

This is a very nice program ideal for using your iphone to investigate the night sky. The reason for 3 stars instead of 4 has to do with it accuracy in reproducing the sky for a specific region. Last night at 10pm I stared at Orion right above my house in the SW part of the sky. However, pUniverse had Orion significantly out of frame even with the horizon off. I tried changing my location to a more southern location but nothing moved the viewpoint to properly depict what I was looking at. The problem is related to the time component. PUniverse has sunset for all of the eastern time zone at 4:11 pm while it should between 7-8 pm depending on your position. Resolved with update. Five stars!

Just ok

By: Sevipants

I think it's ok but not great. This app is worth 99cents. I'll look for something better.

Accuracy

By: JPlumb349

Constellations are not shown in proper positions at time viewed in the Eastern Time Zone.. Constellations are about 3 hours ahead of where they are supposed to be.

Works

By: Jumping Johnny Peters

like a dream! Great work Craic Design, love this app

Accuracy

By: rtaylor61

This is a very nice program ideal for using your iphone to investigate the night sky. The reason for 3 stars instead of 4 has to do with it accuracy in reproducing the sky for a specific region. Last night at 10pm I stared at Orion right above my house in the SW part of the sky. However, pUniverse had Orion significantly out of frame even with the horizon off. I tried changing my location to a more southern location but nothing moved the viewpoint to properly depict what I was looking at. The problem is related to the time component. PUniverse has sunset for all of the eastern time zone at 4:11 pm while it should between 7-8 pm depending on your position.

I like the app.

By: Hogiman

11:00pm went out to compare the night sky to the phone map it looked perfect.

Very fun and useful application with a very compelling feature

By: JonnyBritish

Even under light polluted skies this application can tell you what celestial objects are visible from your location. No more looking for Saturn when its still below the horizon. However a key feature is that the application will give you direction arrows to find the next object. So for example if you could locate Orion and then say show me the planet Saturn, the application would show you arrows pointing to the object. This application will be with me next time I am outside with my telescope and DSLR camera - highly recommended and will no doubt get 5 stars from me when new features are added.