Star walk

One of the reasons astronomy is such an ethereal subject is that it is hard to make sense of the immensity of outer space. We can read about stars in books, but can only wonder about them when we gaze up into the night sky. Even if we non-astronomers had access to a large enough telescope, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to see the same awe-inspiring things the Hubble Space Telescope has photographed because of the blurring effects of earth's atmosphere.

But thanks to the Vito Technologies' Star Walk app, at least identifying the stars and other celestial objects in their beauty is now as simple as pointing an iPhone into the night sky.

Using the iPhone's GPS capability, the app presents an on-screen view based on augmented reality. All you have to do is go outside, point your phone skywards and match the brightest object in the sky. The app launches straight into Star Spotter mode and will find your location and match the sky above where you are standing, overlaying an app-generated image showing all the astronomical objects visible from where you are.

If you see something that interests you, you can select it on the screen, zoom in to get a detailed view and access its astronomical data by tapping on the information button. To get back to the Star Spotter, just give the phone a good shake to reactivate the digital compass.

You can also see how the objects in the sky shift as the earth orbits the sun by scrolling through Time Machine. Flick downwards to see how the stars' positions have changed in relation to the earth from the past, or scroll upwards to find out what a planet's orbital path will look like in the future.

If you want to get a glimpse of how the stars might look beyond our atmosphere, you can scroll through the different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum to see them as gamma rays, X-rays, H-alpha rays, infrared, radio waves or microwaves.