StarMapper : an android-based application to map celestial objects

This report describes StarMapper, a mobile appliation designed for the Android platform that interactively maps the celestial sky and can provide information from Wikipedia about celestial objects to the user. The stars, constellations, planets, sun, and moon are all rendered in real-time and the user can navigate the celestial map simply by pointing the device around the sky to find and identify the different celestial objects. However, if the user prefers, a manual touch-based map navigation feature is also available in StarMapper. While other Android applications currently exist for mapping the sky, such as Google's Sky Map, StarMapper aims to enhance the experience by also providing additional information about celestial objects to the user by means of a simple click on the screen. For obtaining more information about a particular constellation or other celestial object, the user only needs to click on the object's name in the map, and the device's web browser opens to the Wikipedia page of the clicked object. Through this simple mechanism, the user can learn much more about astronomy than just locations of celestial objects.