✧･ﾟ: * the help desk under the stars * :･ﾟ✧
the planetarium app · back to astrelia
astrelia is made by one person, so support is one inbox. write to me about anything: a bug, a star that looks wrong, or just to say the sky was pretty.
[email protected]i read everything · replies usually take a few days
the stars are in the wrong place
almost always the compass. phone magnetometers are off by five to ten degrees on a good day, and worse near cars, speakers, magnetic cases and steel desks. aim the centre reticle at the moon or a bright star you can name, tap align, and astrelia works out the offset and cancels it. that usually gets you under a degree.
the sky is empty and nothing moves
astrelia needs location to know which sky is yours and motion to know where the phone is pointed. if either was declined, turn it back on in ios settings → astrelia. if you would rather not share location at all, set a home location in astrelia's own settings and the sky is drawn for that spot instead.
does it need the internet?
no. every catalog ships inside the app and every position is computed on your phone. there is no account, no sign in, nothing to sync, and no analytics. it works in airplane mode in the middle of nowhere, which is where you want it.
the moon is a little off from another app
check whether the other app is showing the geocentric position. astrelia applies topocentric parallax for where you are standing, and atmospheric refraction near the horizon, so its moon sits where your eyes actually find it. that can be up to a degree away from the simpler answer, and the simpler answer is the wrong one.
ar mode is black
camera permission, in ios settings → astrelia. the camera image is only ever drawn on screen: nothing is recorded, saved or sent anywhere. if you are on a simulator there is no camera and no compass, so sky mode shows a fixed synthetic view.
the galaxy map runs hot
it's a real 3d renderer drawing about 109,000 stars, a whole galaxy and a black hole that bends the light behind it, so yes, it asks something of the battery. sky mode and tonight are much lighter, and turning off the milky way backdrop in astrelia's settings helps too.
a fact about a star looks wrong
tell me, and say which star and which number. the physical data comes from public catalogs (hyg, messier and ngc, the nasa exoplanet archive) and some values are derived rather than measured, so mistakes are possible and i would like to fix them. every source is listed in the app under about → sources.
is there an ipad version?
it installs and runs on ipad, but it was made for a phone held up at the sky, and an ipad layout isn't coming.
what happened to citlali? or stellaria?
same app, earlier names. it is astrelia now and the name is staying.
privacy, briefly: astrelia collects nothing. no account, no analytics, no tracking, no network calls at all. your location and the way you point the phone are used on the device to draw the sky and never leave it.
where the sky comes from: hyg for stars, d3-celestial for the constellation lines, messier and ngc for deep sky, the nasa exoplanet archive for the planets, and public domain or cc by telescope photographs for the nebulae. everything is credited by name in about → sources.
the app is free on the app store, has no ads and no purchases, and isn't going to grow any. the code is open too: GPL-3.0, on github.
clear skies ♥︎