iObserve 1.3.1
Device: Mac OS
Category: Productivity
Price: $19.99, Version: 1.0.13 -> 1.3.1 (iTunes)
Description:* 10.7-Lion Users: A fix to the systematic crash is on its way! *Observe the sky like a pro. iObserve brings your preparation of astronomical observations to a much higher level. It gathers all the information you need when observing the sky with small and big telescopes, and let you manipulate your nights and targets. It has been built from the ground up by a former ESO support astronomer in Chile.-- What others have said: • Best in its class (5 stars) "There is no other app for planing astronomical observations like iObserve. Because of its all-in-one approach, iObserve is also a discovery machine, allowing the user to make connections that were not obvious. And this is perhaps the best thing that can be said about any app. And the author has an amazing roadmap for the app, I can only hope he achieves it. Truly stellar, well done!" (a happy austrian user)• "Must have for serious astronomers" (5 stars) "Every observer with a mac should have this app, and observers without a mac should buy a mac so they can use this app. It has proven invaluable on multiple observing runs both in the planning phase an while observing." (a happy US user). • "Efficient observing " (5 stars) "I witnessed the development of this app from its early beta versions and am pleased that it turned out to be much more stable and clean. I use it everytime I go observing at large observatories to gain a quick overview of my night schedule." (a canadian "Some Dude") • "iObserve" (5 stars) "The Application works extremely well. I needed support and it was very efficient, i had an answer in a few hours." (some enthusiastic italian 'Mr. Fox')• "A must have app for all serious astronomers" (5 stars) "This little application has now matured very nicely from its origins a few years ago. (...) It will appeal to serious astrophotographers, deep sky enthusiasts and – of course – professionnal astronomers. Yes, you can find the same information if you scout around the web, but iObserve puts it all in once place, and a lot more besides. I couldn't work without it. And the developer, Cédric, provides outstanding support." (a nice follower from Australia).iObserve allows you to:• Easily import any known in SIMBAD or not-yet known object, browse the Exoplanets catalogue or download the latest JPL ephemeris of any known comet and asteroid. All object parameters, properties and references will automatically be kept up-to-date.• Draw and track multiple colored airmass curves for about 100 builtin observatories on Earth, and get the objects sorted according to the best observing time,• Draw multiple star tracks with builtin or custom horizon masks, and follow targets across the sky, within customisable night boundaries,• Find automatically the closest standard stars among 21 000 optical and near-infrared (spectro)photometric stars stored in 6 different catalogues,• Download the SDSS, DSS and 2MASS finding charts in multiple photometric bands and with numerous options,• See the Moon's airmass curve, along with its age, coordinates and illumination fraction, and its minimum separation to any object,• Easily convert fluxes and magnitudes between different units. Extrapolations in different bands and photometric systems will be automatically refreshed,• Easily convert object coordinates, • Convert times and see how the Earth shadow is placed on the world map, relative to your position and that of your observatories,• Convert small and large distances, as well as coordinates, and save any conversion for future reference.Moreover, iObserve lets you create new observatories – being a remote location, a professional observatory or simply your backyard – using GPS location if you like. You will then be able to use it like any other builtin observatory.iObserve also provides its famous times bar with Local Time, UTC, (Modified) Julian Date and the Local Mean Sidereal Time for all its observatories.
What's New
New Features • Asteroids & Comets! A simplified interface to JPL's Horizons service. Fully integrated into curve plots. Coordinates are computed by the JPLs and imported into iObserve, along with all the body characteristics. • Exoplanets! Based on the (refreshable) catalogue at exoplanet.eu • A whole new Converters section! Convert, save & annotate conversions for future reference.• Coordinates converter provides a central place to convert any coordinates, not only those of available objects. • Times converter is where all times can be compared, with an Earth map showing night shadow, moon and sun positions and coordinates. • Flux converter allows fluxes and magnitudes to be converted instantaneously to many different units and photometric systems! • Finally a simple and handy distance converter allows to see small and large distance conversions. • Automatic object updates. It just works. In the background, every available SIMBAD info is kept up-to-date for objects (using a custom VOTable parser, yeah). Exoplanets characteristics are also being updated, as well as those of small bodies, from their respective source (exoplanet.eu & JPL's Horizons). • Export and share a list of objects! Either as a custom binary package (with QuickLook integration), or text list is created. Both can be shared, and reimported into iObserve. • A new multiple-observatories view, allowing to compare location and obtain physical and angular distances between places (this is an experimental feature for future versions of iObserve when arrays and interferometers will be fully integrated). Improvements: • No limit on number of retrieved NASA's ADS references for an object. • Builtin finding charts can be downloaded all at once. • Sunset & Sunrise times are now computed when the upper limb of the Sun reach the horizon. • More standard stars catalogues! Telluric, IR, spectro and photometric catalogues. More than 20 000 standard stars now available. • Integration with Instapaper (along that of Papers2). • [dev]Moved to a much more consistent, robust, asynchronous and safer storage for objects and standard stars, using sqlite databases.[/dev] • Small fixes (e.g. Mauna Kea horizon masks) improvements, and new observatories. • Fixed the upgrade from earlier versions.And most of all, iObserve version numbering scheme is back to a reasonable track…
iObserve