This app is worth the price. I've used many planetarium programs, but this UI is unlike anything else. Don't compare this to a full planetarium program. It's really just eye candy: rather than plotting the stars dynamically, the stars are part of one large image that acts as a movable backdrop; the search function omits comets, galaxies, deep sky objects, etc. However, the planets are mapped nicely, as are the constellation figures. Time-elapse is automated beautifully with a clever scroll bar: nudge it to advance in years, months, days or hours. Overall, a fabulous user experience and worth the price.

One word, wow. Amazing to see what is up there, and know what you are looking at. I especially enjoy using in conjunction with "Darkness". As the sun sets, search for the moon and tweak the time machine to see how your evening sky will unfold. And you can see the Southern Cross for the first time without actually going that way. Night mode in red might be nice.

I was expecting this to be reasonably nice, but I was wrong. It blew me away. Not only are the graphics amazing, but the interface is super intuitive. It was clearly designed with the iPhone in mind. Many little touches (like a flare effect when you look at the sun) put this one over the top. Just wow.

Beautiful cg picture of the sky, but since it is a single image instead of plotted stars, you can't eliminate lower magnitude stars to see a more useful view. Also, the image is difficult to orient if you move it by hand. Limited menu of available locations and no way to enter coordinates without GPS or location services, and most locations are in N. America. VERY ANNOYING sound effects [for these alone I'll delete the app and write off my 5 bucks]. For me, this was a big mistake and I'm feeling ripped off for believing the developers hype about its usefulness. If all you want is a pretty, and fanciful, drawing of the night sky here it is. If you want a program that will really be useful for stargazing, move along to something else. The useful programs cost twice as much, but there's a reason for that. They are much more functional in allowing useful views, and have larger data bases of locations and objects. Don't make the same mistake I did - this is NO BARGAIN.

There are now seven serious star-charting apps in the iTunes Store (as of 30 January 2009). Each is good in its own ways, and each has its weaknesses.

Nice and cool. After about an hour of playing with it I learned much new about our Solar system :) Time machine is a brilliant idea. One of the best astro apps in the App Store, worth its money 100% (compared it with Starmap, Distant suns, GoSkyWatch and a few knock-offs like Stars or Astronomer)

Easy to use. I've always wonder where certain stars are or whether what I'm seeing are planets. This is the perfect tool. Now my nightly walks with the dog are interesting. I wish it had sattelite info too.

My complaints with this app:

I use Starry Night Pro at home, 95% of the time just to find out what is where in the sky, and when planets are going to be where so I can see them with my telescope, etc. Star walk takes care of this job, and does it really well. Great time machine implementation, with object tracking. So smooth to scroll around the sky. Very impressive. I would have honestly been happy paying $20 for this program.

Finally figured out what those two bright stars are in the West! Venus and Jupiter! This is one of the best apps out there! Cutting edge graphics, outstanding overlays, and a universe of information. I would have bought the IPOD Touch just for this App??,! (well maybe). Anyway definately worth the the $4.99, would me nice to get more info on the objects like distance and type of star but I am not complaining!

I will add to the praises for this great little app. The graphics and interface are top notch, so of course I'd like to see it do more:). My wish list (beyond the deep space objects and night vision updates already promised), a "light slider" that could fade out the dimmer stars to match current viewing conditions, filters to selectively omit classes of objects, and more info in the object database, including photos. Great job, I'm looking forward to the updates!

I love space! This app is well worth the money. The object catalogue is HUGE...just about every star is clickable! I really like all the aesthetic embellishments like the changing sky color, lens flares, and fading constellation silhouettes. The next step I would like to see would be more detailed information on the planets and maybe a distance-from-earth stat for some of the more well known stars. This app works well as a compass and sunrise/sunset predictor too!

Absolutely love this app. Incredibly awesome interface with the coolest futuristic sounds and "Monority Report" esque features. When selecting an object would love to be able to access more data on the info button, such as the planets composition, diameter, age, etc. This would add tremendously really giving this app an even more impresive depth. I definitely recommend this app to anyone who has the least bit interest in star gazing.

I'm really impress! Can't imagine before that it's possible. So realistic!

This totally rocks! Five stars for being entertaining AND useful!

I have always wondered why Orion looked upside down to my northern hemisphere eyes when I was in Brazil. Sure enough, I put in a location in Brazil, and milleseconds later, I was looking at a sky that I haven't seen in ages. The was Orion, high overhead, and upside down. Now that I write this, I think I know why it's upside down: my northern perspective is one edge of a cone shape, my perpsective in the south is the other edge, and they converge at the pointy part of the cone at the constellation I'm looking at. Meanwhile, my body sense of up is a 'given' in both locations, this makes it seem like Orion is upside down to my body's sense of up. Imagining sighting along the edges of the cone - since the earth is a sphere, from the frame of reference of the constellation, I'm the one who's flip-flopping. Ah-ha! Finally figuring this out is alone worth the price of the app! All it took was the ability to manipulate the starry sky ;) Beautiful graphics, easy to pan and zoom, locations for galaxies, nebulae... lots of good star gazing ahead!

Beautiful. Thank you for manual location input. It's very rural here. There is no GPS on iPod Touch 2G and no Skyhook. Because Star Walk has the whole sky, both above and below the horizon orientation is easy. The way the constellation artwork fades in and out as you move thru the immediate area is excellent. The new "night vision" is useful. And... could we have Pluto. Okay?

As an amateur astronomer I use a PC-based sky simulator, pocket guides, and star wheels to see what's up and interesting. This application doesn't replace them but adds tremendous usability and portability (esp. when visiting the Southern hemisphere without any of those tools). It has a beautiful display and the time advance function lets me predict interesting planetary events and eclipses. I would like to see an option to superimpose a celestial coordinate grid on the sky and directional indications in degrees along the horizon. Sky Walk is informative, useful, fun, and beautifully executed. A must-have for anyone who wants to know what's in the sky at any time.

1. Excellent graphics 2. Timeline feature is awsome 3. Please add the pleides

Love the time travel. Would it be possible to travel in space as well?

If you spend time outdoors enjoying the magic of the night sky, this application is a Must Have! A great interface and innovative look, I am glad I chose Star Walk over the other applications. Get outside and bring your iPhone!

That would make this worth 100 stars, and more info on each planet/star/stellar body would be nice

This is by far the best application about the cosmos that you can get. I really like how you can just touch any object in the sky and press info and it zooms and gives you all the information that you need about the object. Now with the addition of deep space objects (my favorite) the bar has been set . Great job.

this app is simply amazing. by far the best $5 I've spent in the app store so far! highly recommended for anyone who likes looking at the stars. keep up the good work developer!!

Despite the impressive reviews heretofore, I would urge caution (and investigation by 'The Apple Police'). I purchased this $4.95 app several days ago, and while it lists on my computer among iPhone Apps, it will not load to the phone (despite the usual resets). The provided link for Star Walk support links instead to Vito Technologies, which requires identification of the product, version and a FAQ pre-read which are not included at that site. I'll amend this warning if these problems are dealt with - but for now I would reiterate: BUYER BEWARE.

I love this app!! It is a great tool to keep track of what is going on in the sky. It has the planets also. (question: what happened to pluto?) Very intuitive interface and lovely graphic representations. I recently used it to get a visual of the night sky when I was born. Kudos!!

Update January 4, 2009: Small request, if possible: Ability to bookmark display settings for date, time and object lock (for example, the Dec 1, 2008 conjunction of Venus, Mars and the Moon, with my object-lock on Jupiter). I would love the ability to store links like this for immediate "re-constellation" of interesting celestial events. THANK YOU FOR THIS AWESOME APP!!!!! December 18, 2008: WONDERFUL app update, you gave me everything I was looking for... night mode, messier objects, and it now retains my location setting. Tonight, I saw my first nebula with my 16x binoculars thanks to this app. On December 1 I was out photographing the Venus/Jupiter/Moon conjunction that I found out about a month ahead of because of this app. I am learning star names and locations as I've wanted to since I was a kid. This is the best app I own (and I own 88 so far -only 2 of which are games!) Thank you for a truly life-enriching app!

The flashiest astronomy app is weak on substance. Biggest liability is unclear images of the sky coupled with inadequate field of view. Rather than use a database of stars to plot locations, Star Walk appears to rely on a giant photograph of the sky with an antialiasing technique to adjust hiding of dimmer stars. Very little information on objects and weak search. Best feature is automatic rendering of various labels and cartoons depending on current zoom, minimizing need to learn or use controls on a small screen. Not suitable for iPod Touch. Designed solely for iPhone. Upon startup *every time* annoyingly requests for location services to be turned on, which iPod Touch can not use. (Despite the needless, nasty response from Nuinchrist, who, from his name, should know better, the fact is that location services do not always work over WiFi. Depends on the router and the ISP. Never works over the ISP in my rural area. Also, on iPod Touch, location services *never* work when out of range of WiFi, so this defect in Star Walk's programming must be fixed.) Does not allow location to be determined by address, Zip code, or even by manually entering (and saving) latitude and longitude. Allows only selecting from a limited and flawed list of cities. There are two entries for "Portland, USA," but no indication of which is "Portland, Maine, USA," and which is "Portland, Oregon, USA," so which does one choose? States must be included in the United States, and likely provinces abroad. It should allow selecting a city from this list to override the "Location Services" message at startup! Some of the constellation lines and cartoons need to be fixed. The lines for Geminii, for example, should look like twins, not like a box with a line off it. Some of the cartoons are superimposed over their stars with no clear relationship between the two. The snake in the cartoon for the Serpent Bearer clearly does not follow the line of stars. Planets behave improperly when advancing the time, rotaing in the plane of the screen rather that each about its proper axis. Saturn is a glaring example because of its rings. I originally did not buy this app because it did not allow hiding dim stars, but that's now fixed. Would be better to allow the time slider optionally to track an object. Currently it tracks a position in the sky, so you what you want to see scrolls out of view.

This is also the first review I have ever written for any iPhone application. And I have a lot of premium apps.

Wonderful, detailed and just plain cool app for the astro enthusiast, without a steep learning curve. However, it keeps going back to north on its own (this is where the patience comes in). I'll give it all 5 stars when this glitch is fixed, otherwise it's too annoying to use for more than a couple minutes at a time.

3.0 Downgrade worsens Star Walk's problems. With Location Services off, often freezes upon trying to set a new location manually on the slick new Earth screen. Keeps looking for an automatic location that is not there. <><><><><> Prior Review: The flashiest astronomy app is weak on substance. Biggest liability is unclear images of the sky coupled with inadequate field of view. Rather than use a database of stars to plot locations, Star Walk appears to rely on a giant photograph of the sky with an antialiasing technique to adjust hiding of dimmer stars. Very little information on objects and weak search. Best feature is automatic rendering of various labels and cartoons depending on current zoom, minimizing need to learn or use controls on a small screen. Not suitable for iPod Touch. Designed solely for iPhone. Upon startup *every time* annoyingly requests for location services to be turned on, which iPod Touch can not use. (Despite the needless, nasty response from Nuinchrist, who, from his name, should know better, the fact is that location services do not always work over WiFi. Depends on the router and the ISP. Never works over the ISP in my rural area. Also, on iPod Touch, location services *never* work when out of range of WiFi, so this defect in Star Walk's programming must be fixed.) Does not allow location to be determined by address, Zip code, or even by manually entering (and saving) latitude and longitude. Allows only selecting from a limited and flawed list of cities. There are two entries for "Portland, USA," but no indication of which is "Portland, Maine, USA," and which is "Portland, Oregon, USA," so which does one choose? States must be included in the United States, and likely provinces abroad. It should allow selecting a city from this list to override the "Location Services" message at startup! Many of the constellation lines and cartoons need to be fixed. The lines for Geminii, for example, should look like twins, not like a box with a line off it. Some of the cartoons are superimposed over their stars with no clear relationship between the two. The snake in the cartoon for the Serpent Bearer clearly does not follow the line of stars, and Cygnet is shown backwards. Planets behave improperly when advancing the time, rotaing in the plane of the screen rather that each about its proper axis. Saturn is a glaring example because of its rings. I originally did not buy this app because it did not allow hiding dim stars, but that's now fixed. Would be better to allow the time slider optionally to track an object. Currently it tracks a position in the sky, so you what you want to see scrolls out of view.

This is a gorgeous app, only 2 requests, a " dim" feature that would let you adjust the presence of objects in the sky relative to your light environment, the new night feature doesn't feel right, best to eliminate objects in the sky by their magnitud. The other complaint is once you select an object, there is no way to deselect it, you have to select another one