14 DAY TRIAL // As a bit of a space freak myself, coming across this trio of iPhone web apps was a bit of a shock, but a pleasant one nonetheless. Apple's official website provides descriptions and links to iSkyGaze, Starry Night Mobile and LookUp, three spacey web apps designed to show you the stars and their exact locations, how the sky will look 10 years into the future, and alert you to "look up" at just the right time for passing satellites orbiting the Earth.
iSkyGaze (pictured above), from Mobile Fission, can show you Rise and Set Times of various objects in the sky, their current location at a given time, the distance to them (oh, this totally kicks a**), best time to see certain stuff such as Orion Nebula (this is too much, really), magnitude/brightness and, of course, viewing tips.
Additionally, iSkyGaze can also provide its user with useful information on the Sun and Moon, such as illumination percentage (Moon) and Civil Twilight Start/End.
Starry Night Mobile is for those who still believe we're yet to invent the time machine (actually, Apple did that already), as it allows its user to view the sky for any date and time up to 10 years into the past and into the future. It can also show any location on Earth, identify constellations, planets, stars and other objects, using advanced google search. You can either use a zipcode or a landmark (such as the Golden Gate Bridge, for example) and you're all set. You can even change aspect ratio to optimize for portrait or landscape viewing, and then zoom in on any area of the sky to identify nebulas, star clusters, and more. This one's from the guys at Imaginova Canada Ltd.
LookUp, like the two previous web apps, is both iPhone and iPod touch compatible and can tell you when to look out for satellites in the night sky. Yes, you can see them, they look like moving stars, you'll see.... According to Apple, it covers pretty much the whole globe and predicts transits for the International Space Station, Hubble, Envisat, Genesis 1 and 2. LookUp has been developed by Robert Simpson
TUAW also speaks of this bonus app for "werewolves" called Moon Phase, an iPhone web widget that does what its name implies: displays the current phase of the moon, allowing users to input any date and (no, not travel into the future, fan of web app #2) see what the moon phase will be.
