Come join the friendliest, most engaging and inclusive astronomy forum geared for beginners and advanced telescope users, astrophotography devotees, plus check out our "Astro" goods vendors.
Come join the friendliest, most engaging and inclusive astronomy forum geared for beginners and advanced telescope users, astrophotography devotees, plus check out our "Astro" goods vendors.
SkEye for Android is a free title by Harshad RJ. It is a Planetarium app that can also be used as a PUSHTO guide for telescopes.
I finally got a chance to go out and give this title a thorough workout. I'm using the free version currently. My normal planetarium app is SkySafari Pro so this review is only to report on the "pushto" feature of this app.
A nice feature of this app is that your smartphone should sit parallel with your OTA. There's no need to affix it to a 90° stand for it to function correctly. I put my smartphone in a small cardboard box that was sticky-back taped to the cradle of my Dob mount. Initially, you need to "align" this app as you would a normal goto mount. It is pretty straight forward. Select an object (star, solar system, Messier), then center it in your scope and select "Align". I did this on four different stars in the same hemisphere (my house was blocking the other half of the sky). I now did several pushto selections. The screen shows you telrad type circles at varying degrees of diameter. All the way from 16° down to 3 minutes depending on what screen zoom level you have chosen. I chose to use a screen zoom that showed 1° and 2° aiming circles.
Obviously, the pushto is only as accurate as the motion sensors in your smartphone. I was using my 8" f/7.5 Newt with a 32mm EP giving 1° FOV and 48X. For my smartphone, I was able to get the selected object in the EPFOV about 25% of the time, but I was able to get the object in my 9X50 finderscope 100% of the time. For me, this was a passing grade for this app. I would say that it is best suited for those who don't have a Telrad or don't know the night sky very well yet and rely solely on their finderscopes to hunt for their desired object. This app will get you very close and it's hard to scoff at the price.
Give it a try if you have a manual scope and need one more reason to use your smartphone!
Cheers,
JT
∞ Primary Scopes: #1: Celestron CPC1100 #2: 8" f/7.5 Dob #3: CR150HD f/8 6" frac ∞ AP Scopes: #1: TPO 6" f/9 RC #2: ES 102 f/7 APO #3: ES 80mm f/6 APO ∞ G&G Scopes: #1: Meade 102mm f/7.8 #2: Bresser 102mm f/4.5 ∞ Guide Scopes: 70 & 80mm fracs -- The El Cheapo Bros. ∞ Mounts: iOptron CEM70AG, SW EQ6R, Celestron AVX, SLT & GT (Alt-Az), Meade DS2000 ∞ Cameras: #1: ZWO ASI294MC Pro #2: 662MC #3: 120MC, Canon T3i, Orion SSAG, WYZE Cam3 ∞ Binos: 10X50,11X70,15X70, 25X100 ∞ AP Gear: ZWO EAF and mini EFW and the Optolong L-eXteme filter ∞ EPs: ES 2": 21mm 100° & 30mm 82° Pentax XW: 7, 10, 14, & 20mm 70°
Searching the skies since 1966. "I never met a scope I didn't want to keep."
Correct, SkEye is only for Android. My research for an iPhone alternative shows nothing that has "Pushto" functionality.
Sorry,
JT
I beg to differ, since I have developed one for iOS myself Polar Scope Align Pro added Push-To in its DSO database function about a year ago (sorry, not in the free version), including a 'hop-to" variant where it suggests to you a calibration star to hop from for higher accuracy. It works differently than SkyEye (which is a nice app I found out after one of my PushTo users told me about it), as it is not a planetarium app - you can read a review by a beta tester who helped develop it.