Star Viewing Apps

These are apps that provide an immersive and augmented viewing of the stars, planets, and sometimes even space stations or satellites!

They allow students to recognize and experience the locations of various stars in relation to themselves. It’s a powerful tool that promotes questioning, deeper understanding, and engagement because students can rotate their devices to view constellations and more. These apps are a way to help students recognize that the stars and planets never “disappear” and that their locations move throughout out the day and year!

You will find that once students are “viewing the stars”, they will come up with their own questions which is a perfect and natural inquiry opportunity and way to personalize your teaching for students.

Some questions we often hear are, What is a pulsating star? How can I tell the difference between a planet and star without this [app]? Who named the constellations and why are they important?

1. Choose which app would work best with your students!
   • Skyview or SkyGuide
     • Uses the camera and overlays it with the Milky Way galaxy. Includes descriptions of star types, constellations, planets, the International Space Station, and the Hubble space telescope. Great for using outdoors and in the evenings.
   • Starwalk
     • Uses an evening themes background with the stars, constellations, and more over top. Features Real-time celestial bodies tracking, the ability to travel in time with “Time machine,” and anastronomical calendar with various celestial events.
2. Download and open the app.
3. Decide how you will engage students with the app.
   • Free exploration
   • Scavenger Hunt
   • Question generator – have students write as many questions as they can.
   • Galactic Explorer – write from the perspective as a 22nd Century Galatic Explorer. This could be compared to Explorers from history. They could also plot a course based on a chosen destination.
   • Storytelling – How do constellations tell a story? Be inspired by this app and then read various stories about the constellations before having students create their own (oral stories or written). You could also compare historical narratives from different cultures to build multiple perspectives of the stars.

Below is a scavenger hunt we use with Teacher Candidates but you can also borrow and personalize it for your own students. We use it to encourage engagement and exploration of the tool but leave room for TCs to create and record their own questions as they explore.