Skytracker

This week, I played around with the Skytracker app. This is a sky viewing app that details what the night sky looks like beyond our Earth's atmosphere. Using your device's relative location and gyrometer, the app tells you what constellations are visible from where you are. 

Using this app and with this week's prompt in mind, I imagined future versions of this app, potentially for AR glasses such as Google Glass. I think with AR glasses becoming more available to the public, this kind of app could be used for stargazing outside in the summer or looking out the car during a night ride. Looking at the sky and having certain stars highlighted and constellations mapped out would be nice especially if you live in the city. Living in the city, I don't get much exposure to seeing stars at night because of light pollution, and I could see younger kids who live in more urban areas wanting to utilize apps like this to learn about the night sky. 

This app in particular was okay, I actually expected it to be more scientific, but I felt it was just a pretty app. Not that being a pretty app is wrong, though, I liked how when you looked at a constellation, it's picture showed. The sky through this app looked magical and whimsical, and I think if you could maybe click around in the app and see information about the constellations and planets, it would make the app more intuitive and useful.