NavPak

A watch app that shows bearings of the stars and planets.

This app expires at the end of 2020. For the latest version, please see this link:

http://globenav.com/navpak_star_compass.html

Provides a 360 degree panoramic view of the sky where you can get accurate and reliable bearings from the stars and planets. It is also useful to identify stars, planets, and constellations. This is a free beta app enabled through 2020. It runs on Android watches with Android 6.0 or later and a minimum screen resolution of 400 x 400.

A magnetic compass can be inaccurate due to magnetic anomalies, deviation, and other factors. Star bearings take all the guess-work out of it.

The Vector View shows the names of the stars and planets. The Selected Navigation Stars are generally the brightest and are shown as bright yellow. The names are the Proper Names in English. Other Tabulated Stars are shown a little dimmer and their names are a Greek character with a 3 letter abbreviation of the constellation. These are standard designations. NavPak has 128 stars, which includes the 57 Selected Stars, Polaris, and most of the other stars brighter than 3.3. The exceptions are where a dim star is very close to a much brighter Selected Star.

SETUP:

Set your magnetic variation and assumed position, and be sure that the correct GMT is shown. For simplicity, you can set the position (latitude and longitude) to the nearest whole degree, and the bearing should be within 1 degree. For True bearings, set the magnetic variation to 0.

USE:

Rotate the celestial sphere by tapping on the left or right side of the screen. Tap again to stop. Using the slow rotation, you can precisely align the celestial body on the centerline of the screen. Tap to stop, and note the bearing. In the example, we can see that the Moon is at 139 degrees Magnetic, and it is about 33 degrees above the horizon.

Please see the screen shots above for more info on how to use NavPak. Our website has more info on this app and navigation in general. If you have any questions or comments, we will be happy to help. There is an email link on our website.

NavPak reads and writes a small file on your storage to save your position and variation. It will not read or write any other files.