Sky Academy: Learn Astronomy

At first, I didn’t think this app was really teaching me anything more than how to recognize a few patterns with the assistance of borders and lines, but after getting through some of the beginner lessons, I see the patterns are starting to burn in. The lines and borders start to go away the higher the difficulty. I also like being able to simulate my light polluted sky and see the same challenges with fewer stars. Absolutely the best tool for any hobbyist looking to try astronomy.

I’m a university senior majoring in astronomy and physics and decided to download this to learn the constellations while waiting for clouds to clear while taking data. I’ve been playing it a bit each day for a little while since then and absolutely love it. It has been very effective in teaching me the constellations (just about done with the northern hemisphere) and it is super relaxing. The app is also very well polished, with a ton of good settings to configure. Also, I know most people might not care, but THANK YOU FOR LISTING SPECTRAL TYPE FOR THE STARS!!!!! And also visual magnitude, and parallax, and color index, and MULTIPLE catalogue names?? It’s as if this were literally made for me. The one thing I’d love to see added is an option to display the constellation lines as drawn by H.A. Rey in his book “The Stars: A New Way to See Them.” Those are the lines the professors here tend to prefer. The standard IAU lines are fine (and definitely the “official” lines, and a good default) but Rey’s are more fun in my opinion. Overall, fantastic app, and astronomy researcher approved!!