Stargazing

Papua New Guinea is blessed with crystal clear night skies, making the SkyView Lite app a must-have treasure and marvel of modern technology.

The app is both fascinating and educational, making us more aware of our place in the celestial scheme of things, and bringing the wonders of space to our mobile devices through a fun and intuitive user interface.

The app helps you focus on a particular star or celestial body and provides you with everything you need to know with detailed descriptions including its name, location, and distance.   

SkyView even adds soft, moody music to enhance your stargazing experience.

SkyView Lite display options

Among the display options on the free version of SkyView are:

  • an augmented reality camera which combines your current position with the night sky
  • constellation art
  • constellation lines
  • satellites
  • object trajectories

along with other features you can play around with to enhance your experience.

Getting spaced out with SkyView

I downloaded SkyView Lite on my appropriately named Galaxy+ smartphone and headed down to my local beach to sit and get spaced out on the night sky.

Here are a few screen-grabs of the SkyView experience, with my location as the augmented reality setting.

Under a beautiful half-moon, with waves lapping on the beach, and SkyView star-gazing music playing softly in the background, I quickly located my star-sign constellation of Cancer.

  • SkyView told me all I needed to know about one of the brightest stars in the constellation, Altarf, some 303 light-years from Earth.
  • SkyView told me all I needed to know about my constellation of Cancer, one of twelve constellations of the zodiac.
  • SkyView also told me all I needed to know about the Moon, as it was also in the field of view, our closest natural celestial body, 374,652km from Earth.

I could then point my phone toward other stars in the night sky, gaze in wonder, and learn more about the enormity and magnificence of God’s creation.

Currently available on iOS and Android, Skyview Lite is a free version of the app, and perfect for stargazing novices like me.



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