This Android app taught me celestial navigation; it changed how I see the night sky
Android Police 2026-06-28 13:30:11
Context: The author, Irene Okpanachi, a features writer for Android Police, discovered the Celestial Navigation 360 app, which teaches users how to navigate using celestial bodies, and found it to be a game-changer in understanding the night sky. She downloaded the app to learn about celestial navigation and was impressed by its features and capabilities. The app uses a live sky chart to show the position of celestial bodies and allows users to take measurements using their phone's camera.
Key Facts
- The Celestial Navigation 360 app, also known as CelNav 360, displays a live sky chart showing the sun, moon, planets, or stars plotted from the user's assumed position, along with readings in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and azimuth and altitude readings in degrees.
- The app features an almanac database of 58 celestial stars, including Acamar, Bellatrix, Dubhe, and Polaris, which allows users to pull up the schedule for any date and time.
- The app's Lunar UT calculator estimates Universal Time by gauging the angular distance between the moon and a nearby object, and it also includes a Google Maps redirect feature to confirm the user's assumed position.
- The app's companion app, Sextant Frame, turns the phone's camera into a sextant, allowing users to take measurements of celestial bodies, which can then be exported to CelNav 360 as a new entry with a timestamp.
- The app is free to download on the Play Store, with a premium version available for a one-time purchase of $5 or a yearly subscription of $19, which extends basic features to the sun, moon, and planets.