✧･ﾟ: * pointed at the sky with love * :･ﾟ✧
ア ス ト レ リ ア
a pocket galaxy ♥︎
OUT NOW · FREE ON THE APP STORE · NAMED AT LAST ↗ ✦ open source on github (GPL-3.0) ↗constellations aren't real: they're a line-of-sight illusion. these are the actual stars at their actual distances (real HYG catalog data, same as the app). drag to orbit and watch the familiar shape fall apart into deep space.
drag to orbit · pinch or scroll to zoom · the real thing runs on-device with every constellation ♥︎
a tiny taste of the app's free-fly mode: the 7,000 brightest stars around the sun, each at its true 3D position, with a stylized milky way behind them (the real app renders ~109k in Metal, plus nebulae baked from telescope photos… and the black hole). zoom all the way out: that little pink ring is home.
drag to orbit · scroll or pinch to zoom · hover a bright star to name it · stars are real, the spiral is art, same rule as the app
the heaviest thing in the galaxy map is Sgr A*, the galaxy's central black hole. fly close and it gravitationally lenses the whole rendered galaxy behind it (on the phone this is a real Schwarzschild geodesic march, on the GPU). this toy does the pocket version: the classic weak-field lens equation, live, on the same real stars, looking toward the actual galactic centre. watch stars split into double images and smear into an einstein ring as they pass behind it.
move your cursor (or drag) and the hole follows · scroll or pinch to feed it ♥︎ · in the app it bends a whole galaxy. here it just wants to say hi
the app's nebulae aren't textures: each one is baked from a real telescope photo into ~60,000 particles (the photo never ships, only the points). here are 7,000 of them, with the same trick the app uses: face-on you see the photograph, orbit and it becomes a volume.
drag to orbit · scroll or pinch to zoom · source photos are public-domain / CC-BY telescope images, credited in the app
an iOS app i made. you raise your phone toward the sky and it shows you what's actually there: every star, planet, the sun and the moon, computed for your exact spot on earth at this exact second, with real astronomical math. tap anything and it tells you everything it knows.
it has a sister app, selenia ☾: same engine, same real sky, a different way of reading it.
the rule i'm building it by: accurate, deep, and beautiful, in that order of difficulty and the reverse order of why i started.
this one is out: four names later (astrolabe, stellaria, citlali, astrelia) it's on the app store. astrelia is from aster, star ✧
elysia@pink:~/Developer/Astrelia $ ./status --check ✦
✓ astronomy engine · unit-tested against the textbooks
✓ AR sky view · verified against the actual sky
✓ galaxy map + black hole · metal renderer, lensing and all
✓ sister app: selenia · the same sky, read her way ♡
✓ settings · it remembers you now
✓ a name · astrelia, from aster: star ♡
✓ app store release · out now, v1.0 ♡
elysia@pink:~/Developer/Astrelia $
wish granted, eventually ♥︎