Looking to the skies with augmented astronomy
It’s an overcast evening in Cardiff but the sky is bright. Light pollution from the city reflects off the clouds – it’s 9pm but feels like 6am.
Most of Cardiff scores a seven on the Bortle scale – a measure of brightness in the night sky. ‘Excellent dark sky’ accounts for a perfect ten. Whereas ‘inner city sky’ scores on the bottom of the scale.
Cardiff’s score is labelled ‘suburban/urban transition’ – one of only two places in Wales with a score so high. The other is the sky above Port Talbot steelworks.
Tonight it’s hard to find the moon, let alone any stars. Being surrounded by student nightlife,
I’m more likely to wish upon a rogue firework than a star.
Getting the gear
I looked for starter telescopes – the cheapest one was £199, with other beginner kits reaching stratospheric prices of £3000.
Apart from a few close up clouds, light pollution from the city would prevent me from seeing much at all with telescopes.
I browsed Google’s play store – three of the top 10 free educational apps are stargazing apps; Stellarium Mobile, Star Tracker and Star Walk 2. I settled on the highest rated app, Stellarium Mobile.
The apps use augmented reality (AR) to bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds, utilising your phone’s location and gyroscope – a device used to maintain a reference of direction to map the night sky above.
On opening the app, a message appeared telling me to point my device up. So, I did. Then I grinned in the same way you do when you look at a puppet and believe it’s alive.
I span my phone around, taking in the stars and planets. Rotating my phone instead of finger-scrolling was enough to immerse me in the solar system.
I hovered over constellations – the stars linked with lines and illustrations over them. I tapped a constellation and a Wikipedia excerpt displayed, chronicling its history. Who knew Orion had a star system called Hatysa between his thighs?
The verdict
After putting my phone away my mind was clear, and I felt calm. It could have been the newness of the experience, but the app had a positive effect on my mood.
It felt best when I could feel the outside on my skin – helping me forget I was hanging out of my window pointing my phone at the sky.
Stellarium was no replacement for being outside with a flask of tea and good company, but it felt like a healthy way to spend time on your phone.