Stellarium Mobile does not alert you to this, but it is necessary. Furthermore, you will have to do the figure of eight swirling motion to calibrate the phone’s compass. However, while this sounds fantastic - and it is - the reality is that patience is required because it’s quite slow to keep up with your movements. Every move you make will be augmented with a map of the stars. This interactive view gives you a window onto the cosmos. This will engage the phone’s sensors so that the sky map will align with the phone’s orientation. The first thing you’ll probably want to do is tap the phone icon in the lower right corner. Tapping the cog icon to open up the settings is where all the fun and interesting parts of Stellarium Mobile can be found. Watching the passage of time through Stellarium Mobile In this mode, time can be paused, speeded up and reversed. From there you can go back to daylight hours or set off an animation of how the sky will change over time. Tapping the date and time box opens up the time controls. When launched during daylight hours, Stellarium Mobile will skip ahead to night time for obvious reasons. Stellarium Mobile’s landscapes in daylight Pinch and stretch gestures will zoom in and out, in addition to the on-screen controls. Instead, you swipe across the screen to look up or down and turn clockwise or anti-clockwise. By default, the view does not follow the orientation of your phone. The only user interface elements on show are the time and date, zoom controls and a link to the settings menu. Stellarium Mobile starts by showing a silhouetted meadow set against a starry night sky.

Stellarium mobile user guide