Earth Gets an Upgrade : A Look at Luminos 9.2
Luminos Fans -
Although we’ve spent much of our time enhancing the distant cosmos in the Luminos app, for our new release we’ve set our sights on targets a little closer to home. We’re upgrading the appearances of Earth, the Moon, and other favorite astronomical objects. We hope you enjoy the new look!
Big and Beautiful
Devices running iOS are more powerful now than during the original development of Luminos, so we’ve taken this opportunity to provide higher detail versions of some of the Solar System’s best sights. Our Earth texture has been re-sampled to provide up to 24 times greater detail on the most advanced devices, resulting in 100 megapixel images of Earth with detailed bump mapping.
We’ve reworked our internal models of the Earth’s geometry, as well, using the latest World Geodetic System standard, WGS84. This provides more precise calculations for satellite positions, as Luminos now models the Earth more accurately as an ellipsoid.
We’ve also enhanced the Moon’s appearance using images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, making every crater, dorsa, and rima pop on the screen. Make sure to zoom in for a better view!
The Sun and the Milky Way have also gotten a makeover: the Sun texture has been reworked using new NASA STEREO and SDO mission imagery, and the Milky Way textures have been re-sampled for greater detail.
A Dark Path
On the morning of August 21, 2017, a full solar eclipse will touch down along the Oregon coast and race across the United States for the next hour and a half. To assist in eclipse planning, we’ve improved the path maps in our eclipse detail view to show precise boundaries for the path of totality.
Now you can see precisely which corridor of land will be covered by the totality of the eclipse. Any areas outside of the path will only see a partial event. If you haven’t already done so, plan your viewing site now.
From the Moon browser, we now provide a quick access to a list of upcoming moon phases. You can also jump to the current moon phase from the Tonight view.
Fast Track
To help you keep track of your past selections, we’ve added new controls to navigate back and forth among your target objects. In addition to swiping across the selection bar, you can now tap arrows to quickly jump to other objects in your history.
In addition, on iPad the Luminos browser will no longer automatically open on first selection. Instead, you can tap the “Info” button to open the browser at will to discover more detail only when you want it.
More Observations
As always, we’ve made a few other changes to Luminos that we want you to know about:
- Our Astro-Physics mount driver has been updated to support CP4, as well as adding new support for park position #4.
- Many constellation images have been redrawn or re-tuned using stars from the UCAC4 catalog, giving them much finer lines and balance.
- A new grid setting gives you the option to see only the Equator in the equatorial coordinate system.
- Also, a deep space setting allows object icons / indicators in the sky view to be enabled or disabled independently of the images themselves.
We hope you enjoy the new release, and we value your feedback!
Clear skies,
John and Brian