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Planetarium in a mobile phone? More stars than the Oscars!

Who would want to carry a star map around in their pocket? Any astronomy student, that's who.

The software is available, and free from the developer

"MicroSky is a freeware planetarium for mobile/cell phones with Java-support and a connection to the internet (preferable GPRS or UMTS ). It is a J2ME-Midlet client/server application which can display 2.500.000 stars, 8.000 deep sky objects, the constellations, the planets, local horizon and registered comets."

All you need is a Java-enabled phone, up to date. It fits in an astonishingly small amount of your phone memory - no need to go buying add-in SD cards.

But you do need to be in range of a GPRS data service, because the images are generated on a remote server - the Sky Server. And so although the software is free, the data won't be.

Even so, the amount you're likely to spend is small: "The data transfer amount for a NightSky-View over the Http-Request depends on the display size, the grayscale quality and the display limit option," says the manual.

The transfer amount depends on the compressable parts of the requested NightSky-View, e.g. the amount of stars or similar colors. "For example," says the developer, "the maximum scrollable imagesize on my Siemens S55 is 142 by 112 pixels, and there are about two to five KBytes to transfer per NightSky-View-Request - with normal greyscale quality."

The greyscale quality option leaves it to you to choose between beauty and size. "On most mobiles you will not see any difference between high and normal quality, so normal quality is recommended to reduce data transfer."

The transfer amount for a logon or for a logoff-Request is so few that it can be ignored.

The advantage of this portable planetarium for the neophyte astronomer is its visibility. However, that could also be its drawback because working in the dark, with only faint stars to look at through a small portable telescope or a good pair of binoculars, the eyes have to be at their most sensitive. One second looking at the brightly illuminated displays of modern smart-phones could blind you for ten minutes.

Try it out: register free with the server, download, and install.

Ease of use? Ah, that's another question entirely. But carrying star maps around is inevitably complex anyway, and it's probable that anybody with the determination to find one constellation amongst so many, will be able to find one menu amongst the dozens of options.

Just to frighten you, here's the "short-cut" options menu list (see panel, right):