Mobile software for celestial tracking and local sideral time

 

Local Sidereal Time 1.0 has been released!
It is no longer beta software.

It can be downloaded at http://www.getjar.com/products/25475/LocalSiderealTime
It’s touched 2,400 downloads till 14th March!! 

My renewed interest in astronomy mixed with my software programming hobby! I spent a few days writing a java (J2ME) mobile application for local sideral time calculation. It turned out to be a really good tool in the pocket. Having your mobile phone display the local sideral time is a good tool in the hands of star watcher. I could not just stop there and went ahead on making it into a full fledged graphical application which plots the sky in real time and in 2D or 3D modes.  See the screen shots above.

The software is still beta (10th Feb 2009)
If you are interested in checking out the beta , here’s the download link-
http://www.4shared.com/file/86885245/1db07081/LST.html

The app requires a java enable phone with MIDP 2.0 & CLDC 1.1. This beta version will expire on 15-Mar-2009. Please try it and let me know of your suggestions and inputs! If you want to contact me, my email address is there in the readme file in the download.

The app’s beta  readme file is here, it has some basic user guide stuff

*** Information here is also beta! It will change later! ****
9th February 2009
LST 1.0Beta
Local Sideral Time & Celestial Tracker
Arun Venkataswamy

LST is a software for amateur astronomers and sky watchers. It is a pocket map to the sky above. It primarily has a local sideral time calculator which allows the users to easily use printed sky maps. It also has real time sky views in 2D and 3D planetarium modes. The software displays 904 stars with magnitudes lower than 4.5, 85 constellations and the planets. The constellations and the planets can be tracked in Azimuth and Altitude values in text mode or in a 2D or 3D map of the sky.

::IMPORTANT:: For the software to work correctly the following points must be satisfied with atmost care. Failure to do so will give totally wrong results in the software-

• Time and Date should be set correctly on your mobile phone.
• Time zone should be set correctly on your mobile phone. 
• Latitude and Longitude of the place of observation (city) should be set correctly in the software. Please refer to the internet to get the latitude and longitude of your city. 

Using the software : The software options are provided with the menu button “more”. The first thing to do after installing the software is to setup the location information. Select the “setup” option and enter the information. After entering the information, select the “save” option. Saving has to be done explicitly, and it is not done automatically. There are two options to track objects – Text mode and Graphical mode. The text mode can be selected by selecting the “text mode” option. In this mode, the user can select the celestial item to be tracked. This option lists the LST, J2000.0 date and the position in azimuth and altitude values. The graphical mode can be selected by choosing the “star charts” option. There are 3 graphical modes – Ortho, Fisheye and First person. Ortho and Fisheye are dome top views and first person is sort of a 3D planetarium view. In the graphical modes, the following keys are used to control the display-

• * : Cycle through modes 
• Left,Right,4,6 : Turn left and right (First person view only) 
• Up,Down,2,8 : Lift head up and down (First person view only) 
• 5 : Field of view (First person view only) 
• 1 : Turn tracking display on and off 
• 7,9 : Select the object to track 
• 0 : Return to menu

Please give me feedback on the application…

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