Cosmic Discoveries app for iPhone and iPad

4.9 ( 5799 ratings )

Education
Developer: American Museum of Natural History

Free

Current version: 1.2, last update: 7 years ago
First release : 08 Oct 2010
App size: 56.11 Mb

Take a ride with the Museum’s astrophysicists through our Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, and beyond. Cosmic Discoveries is the first app to collect over 1000 stunning astronomic images and was launched as part of a year-long series of events to help commemorate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Museum’s Rose Center for Earth and Space, a New York City icon and one of the world’s most revered science and educational institutions.

A MOSAIC OF THE UNIVERSE IN YOUR POCKET

Cosmic Discoveries contains over 1000 images of everything from the pockmarked surface of Mercury to the majestic Horsehead Nebula, culled from the Museum’s archives and Science Bulletins, as well as dozens of space agencies and observatories around the world. All the photographs appear on the app’s initial screen stitched together to form one of the most iconic shapes in our Solar System — the gas giant Saturn and its rings.

Double-tap or pinch to zoom into the mosaic and inspect individual photos. Tap the info button to flip the photos and read fascinating information about famous astronomical discoveries, the history of human understanding of outer space, and current advances in astrophysics. Comment on the photos, read others’ comments, or share with your friends so they can join you on your journey through the universe.

A SOLAR SYSTEM OF STORIES

In addition to over 1000 images in the mosaic, Cosmic Discoveries also features stories on a range of subjects from comets to galaxy clusters. Additional stories are on the way — so when you’re not watching the skies, keep an eye out for more Cosmic Discoveries.

TRAVEL FROM THE TRIASSIC ERA THROUGH COSMIC DISCOVERIES

Cosmic Discoveries follows up on the enormous success of the American Museum of Natural History’s first official app, Dinosaurs – # 1 educational download on the iTunes store in the months after its release — which lets paleontologists of all ages explore the AMNH fossil halls. And explore our halls and collections with the AMNH Explorer, which Gizmodo called “Nothing less than state-of-the-art.”

VERSION 1.2 OF COSMIC DISCOVERIES:

Travel further into space and read about spiral galaxies, brown dwarfs, globular clusters, massive stars and novae in the new stories, written by the American Museum of Natural History’s astrophysicists and included in the latest update.

Pros and cons of Cosmic Discoveries app for iPhone and iPad

Cosmic Discoveries app good for

The idea of this app is brilliant - photos of "Cosmic Discoveries" from the museums collections, arranged for random access in a photo mosaic, fun and fascinating, you never know what youre going to discover when you zoom in to browse the pictures! Best part is the interactve comments feature-you can respond to the pictures with a posting that becomes part of the info attached to the picture. The posts become part of the whole, thus the resource grows organically over time. The worst part is also the posting feature- sometimes the comments are just time-wasters, some judicious vetting of the comments might be helpful. It would be helpful if the museum added a bookmark feature- there seems to be no way to find a picture a second time, if you want to revisit it :-(. Overall, an exciting resource, likely to spark interesting conversations with kids.

This is actually pretty cool. I can look at the pictures for hours - most have a description, but a lot do not which is annoying...I want to know what Im looking at! All in all, worth a download if you like space.

a seemingly-endless number of beautiful astronomy images, with some accompanying information, stylishly presented. organized fairly randomly, its more of a good jumping-off point for inspiring your imagination or further research (from other sources), or just an entertaining, casual look at the vast field of astronomy.

We can enjoy numerous photos and information about each picture. This application includes countless stars, nebulas, like Universe.

Some bad moments

Totally cool app, great images and info, I cant believe that its free!

Taking forever to load even on wifi. Is it that big ? Ill review again if it ever finishes loading.

This is a really cool app; it holds a LOT of information. Nice reference to have in my pocket.

Awsome app! There is so much information on here. I am defintely showing this to my science teacher!

The images dont seem up to retina quality, which is a shame. <3 space photos.

Locked up after the first pic I looked at. Also, trying to find picts in a mosaic of a 1000 on an iPhone screen is ridiculous. Deleted.

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museum, discovery education, american museum of natural history, and other. So, download free Cosmic Discoveries .ipa to run this nice iOS application on iPhone and iPad.