Pocket Stars Features

All three versions of Pocket Stars share similar features, with a few differences shown in the following table.

Version Platform  
PDA Windows Mobile Pocket PC
WM6 Professional and WM6 Classic
 
SP Windows Mobile Smartphone
WM6 Standard
 
PC Windows desktop PCs  

Star Chart Features

PDA SP PC
User interface optimized for simple and fast star, planet, Messier, and Caldwell object identification.
Single click on any body to get the name, designation, calculated altitude, azimuth, and magnitude. Drag the cursor to scroll the chart. Zoom in and out with a single click.
3D Orrery display of solar system and background stars and constellations.
Display of orbital paths for inner solar system bodies showing daily positions for one year centered on current date.
Animation of the sky in increments of hours, days, weeks, or months.
Manual or automatic control of star magnitudes. Simple control over which objects to display. Overall, these features give great control of visual clutter given the limited screen real estate on the Pocket PC and Smarphone.
Black, white, and red star chart colors for normal, bright, and night viewing conditions, respectively. Complete skinning or customization of star chart colors.
Chart can be rotated to any of the 16 compass points and also flipped along the North - South axis. This allows the either overhead (East and West reversed) or non-overhead (East and West normal) viewing.
Polar grid with hour angle and declination labels.
Zenith grid.
Search and scroll to constellation, body, star, or Messier / Caldwell objects.
User location set by clicking on map, city selection, GPS, or by entering Latitude and Longitude.
Chart can be "live, realtime", or static for any user selected time.
Core positional calculation routines based on "Novas" (Naval Observatory Vector Astrometry Subroutines Version 2.0.1). Star data is from the Bright Star Catalog (5th Revised Edition), comprising the 9110 brightest stars using J2000 equatorial positions and the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF). Corrections are performed for proper motions and parallax.
Planet ephemeris data from Jet Propulsion Laboratory using the DE405 database. DE405 is JPL's latest planetary ephemeris with correction for both nutations and librations. DE405 uses the J2000 International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF). The portion of this database provided with Pocket Stars covers the years CE 2000 to CE 2020. Other ephemeris date ranges are available for download here.

Other Features

Rise, set, and meridian times for all solar system bodies
Lunar Phase calendar and animation showing the relative positions of the earth, moon, and sun.
Images and physical data for planets, moon and sun.
Calculators for Great Circle Distances, Range and Bearing, Horizon Distances, Julian Day, and degree minute seconds conversions.
Optional display of all 110 Messier and 109 Caldwell objects through separate free download.
Full screen mode.
Sloan Digital Sky Survey image display

Celestial Navigation Features

Reduction from sextant altitude to observed altitude for any of the 9110 stars, nine planets, and sun and moon.
Corrections for observer height (DIP), refraction (temperature and atmospheric pressure), and vessel movement.
Position from intercept and azimuth by calculation for multiple sextant observations following procedures in "The Nautical Almanac" by the United States Naval Observatory. Any number of sextant observations can be individually enabled to compute a best fit when computing a FIX. Results may be plotted, showing the assumed position (AP), FIX, and observations with intercepts and amplitudes.
Intermediate calculations for each observation can be displayed, with selectable formats (DD.dddd, DD MM.mm, DD MM SS) for degrees, minutes, seconds.

Available Translations

English
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Chinese
Russian

Which Version of Pocket Stars do you need?

If your Windows Mobile device uses a stylus, you want the PDA version.  If it doesn't, you want the SP version. The SP version will operate just fine on PocketPCs, but will not make use of the stylus.

3 Versions

Windows Mobile

SP Smartphone

PDA Pocket PC


Windows Desktop

PC Win7, Vista, XP


Compare

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