Basic Operations - Continued

You can read the Sky & Telescope "Sky at a Glance" by tapping the "SkyWeek" button in the nav bar:

The week shown at the top may be wrong (S&T's error, not SkySafari's) but the information shown is current.

You can tour the Universe by tapping on the "Orbit" button after selecting an object. You will be "taken" to that object. If you select the Sun you will be taken to a point above the Sun and look "down" on the Solar System (left). If you tap a star (I selected Sirius for the screen capture on the right) you will go to that star and can pan around to see how the "sky" looks from there.

A very useful feature is measuring distance between two objects. You select the first object and then double-tap on the second object. Here I measured the distance (both angular and actual) between the Moon (selected) and Uranus (only a portion of the sky chart is shown):

A new feature in version 5 is the "Share" button in the nav bar. According to the new features comparison chart (on page 1 of this review) it is a "Social Media Share Button", however, I see only Mail as an option (left). I use Twitter but it does not appear when tapping "More" (right). The view can be copied and then pasted into your social media app if it supports pasting.

Also new in version 5 is importing of Observing Lists. At the bottom of the "Search" screen are Observing Lists (left below). Tapping "Import from Online Repository" opens a list (a portion of which is at the right) of currently available Observatory Lists from others.

One of the things I enjoy doing with my 8" telescope is viewing some globular clusters and star associations in M31 Andromeda Galaxy. SkySafari 5 Pro now includes globular clusters in M31. I did a search for the M31 globular cluster G76 (which I have viewed) on the iPad and zoomed in on M31:

Using SkySafari 5 Pro will be very useful when I do more M31 DSO observing.

As I was opening my observatory one night a notification from SkySafari appeared on my iPhone 6s Plus lock screen:

I looked at the sky in the direction indicated and sure enough, there was the flare at the time indicated. If you like satellite passes and flares, you will appreciate this feature.

SkySafari 5 Pro provides a 3D Galaxy view to help you visualize positions of objects in our galaxy. You select an object (I used the star Capella; left image below) and then tap "Galaxy" at the lower right. That opens the view of our galaxy (right).

You can pinch to zoom in/out on the galaxy (left image below is zoomed in) or use "Auto zoom". Tapping the three dots at the lower right shows a menu of display options.

You can also select another galaxy (like M31) and view its positional relationship to our galaxy.

One last new feature I'll touch on here (but was not tested) is the "Storage" setting. If you use SkySafari 5 Pro on multiple devices you can share your Observing Lists and Settings files via the "cloud". Apple iCloud and Google Drive are supported:

Tapping the "Help" button on the nav bar at the bottom of the Sky Chart screen brings up an extensive help for the app:

If you select "Local Astronomy Events" you will see upcoming local events based on your location:

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Go to Page 3 for Telescope Control, Apple Watch, and the Summary

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