Now that augmented reality has a "killer app" in Pokémon GO, it's an excellent time to explore other options. One of them is astronomy. Undoubtedly, anyone interested in learning about their night sky will get a more direct experience starting with binoculars or a more or less affordable telescope, but Universe2Go proposes combining special glasses, a compatible smartphone, and a mobile app to instantly identify planets, stars, and constellations.
The web, high-definition cameras, and software planetariums have revealed a new facet of amateur astronomy. Do you remember the impact on Jupiter last March? The evidence that appeared on YouTube was published by two enthusiastic astronomers located in Austria and Ireland respectively. There are more eyes looking at the sky, and this is because it's now easier to understand what we see. Installing a copy of Stellarium, configuring our location, detecting an object, and "going out to see it" has its reward, but technology can take on an even more advanced role, and for that, we need to add something like augmented reality to the equation.
What Universe2Go Does
Imagine a sort of Stellarium loaded on a smartphone, which when observing the sky through the integrated camera identifies the main stars and provides additional information. If we add special glasses to that, what we get is Universe2Go. What can this product really do? First, represent the 88 constellations that dominate our sky. It also provides close-ups of planets, galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae. But the available information is not only visual. Universe2Go includes more than three hours of audio with detailed explanations, and in the case of constellations, it presents their origins according to Greek mythology.
Compatibility and Price
Both the application and the basic instructions are in Spanish, and its compatibility list includes dozens of devices, but the minimum operating systems are Android 4.2 and iOS 7.0. According to the official page, the price of Universe2Go is 99 euros, with free shipping throughout Europe. Although this solution requires a companion smartphone, the truth is that starting to learn more about the sky for that price doesn't sound so bad.
