NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Learn the stars, by phone
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 May 22, 10:42 -0600
From: Ken Muldrew
Date: 2009 May 22, 10:42 -0600
On 22 May 2009 at 9:19, frankreed@HistoricalAtlas.com wrote: > So what sort of applications could we create to achieve this goal? > Assuming that phones with pointing capabilities like this are just around > the corner (a year or two), what sort of star identification software > would help to "inspire" interest in celestial navigation? If you want them to remember a few of the stars then some sort of mnemonic illustration would be valuable (e.g. Big Dipper "pointer" stars, arc to Arcturus, spike to Spica, that sort of thing). But maybe these devices will make that knowledge useless (just as nobody with a calculator really needs to know how to do arithmetic). Star distances in light years is often interesting to people (e.g. "the light that you see coming from Mizar started travelling when your grandfather was born"). 3-D rotations of constellations can be eye-opening, as can pictures of the sky far into the future (or past). Finding Venus during twilight is fun, but maybe a cell-phone app will make it like playing tennis with the net down. Ken Muldrew. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Navigation List archive: www.fer3.com/arc To post, email NavList@fer3.com To , email NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
