#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON HOW TO#
#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON UPDATE#
#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON FREE#

Accurately showing the current illumination (phase) at the time of your observing is useful to let you know if some lunar feature along the terminator is visible. If you are a dedicated observer of our Moon and want to watch for 'bonus' sights from libration, Moon Atlas is worth having. The actual lunar features, phase, and libration match the Moon Atlas display pretty accurately. How well did Moon Atlas show what I was seeing at the telescope? Here's a view of the Moon through my 12' telescope (taken with an iPhone afocal 81X, 102X, and 163X, respectively) and the corresponding map display from Moon Atlas at the same time. Unlike the iPhone version, which only uses portrait mode, the iPad version can display in both portrait and landscape. And the Search feature is more obvious on the iPad at the top left. Help is immediately accessible using the 'i' button at the top. The buttons at the bottom in the iPhone version are at the top in the iPad version. The iPad version operates the same as the iPhone version with some user interface changes. That should probably be noted in the Help. If you click to the left of the Cancel button you can enter text to search for. When you are viewing one of the Search categories there is a faint (hard to see) Cancel button at the top right. You can search for many types of features on the lunar surface, including spacecraft.Īlthough it is not obvious on the black display, you can enter text in a search field at the top of the screen. On subsequent launches of the app the Libration display worked properly. Fortunately, the Map view of the Moon does show libration effects when you manually change the date.

#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON UPDATE#

Even with Realtime update OFF, swiping to show the next month briefly showed the next month and then quickly reverted back to the current month. I initially had a problem with the Libration display. The Libration display shows the amount of libration visible along the lunar limb on each date in the displayed month. Sliding the display left and right will display future and past phases by 24 hours.

The Phase display will show the Moon's current phase and some information. I have requested that this be added by the developer in a future update. Unfortunately, the app does not remember the display modes set by the user when totally quitting the app. Not all lunar features are identified so smaller features are unlabeled. Double-tapping on a feature label will show some information about that feature. The resolution of the zoomed-in display of the Moon is not the greatest and looks like viewing the Moon at high magnification on a night of poor seeing. The display can been zoomed in and out using two-finger gestures. Tapping the Earth button at the upper left will switch between the view from the Earth to a Globe display that can be rotated to show far side features. Tapping the Phase button at the upper right will toggle showing the Moon's phase ON or OFF.

Tapping N at the bottom right will change the orientation of the Moon to match the view in your eyepiece. Tapping the A button at the bottom left will turn ON/OFF labels and Lat/Long lines.

#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON HOW TO#

On the Map display you can change how to display the Moon. While on Settings you should review the brief Help page to learn how to adjust what Moon Atlas shows. You should also change the other settings as appropriate. Once you give the app permission to access your location, Find me will work. Tapping 'Find me' will fail with the alert shown. You should first go to the Settings and change your location. When the app is launched you see this display. The only iOS app I found that could do that was Moon Atlas. While that app worked fine for what it did, I wanted something more: an accurate representation of the extent and location of lunar libration, which allows us to see about 59% of the Moon's surface over time.

#THE MOON ATLAS OF THE MOON FREE#

I have been using a free Moon atlas program on my iPhone for a long time.

The moon atlas of the moon