My Cosmic Compass

The iPhone tool for discovering which stars and planets rise and set along any alignment, today and thousands of years ago. Reveal the celestial connections hidden in ancient monuments, sacred sites, or your own backyard. WHAT IS COSMIC COMPASS? Point your iPhone along any structure: a temple axis, a stone circle, a pyramid edge, a garden wall. Cosmic Compass records the precise bearing using GPS, compass and camera, then calculates which stars and planets rise or set along that line, and when they did so throughout history. Does that Neolithic monument face the rising of Sirius? Which star rose along a Maya temple axis in 900 AD? Did the builders catch Venus at dawn? Or which stars rise along your own street? A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME Calculate star and planet positions for any year from 5000 BC to 3000 AD. Set the year a temple was built and see exactly where Sirius, Venus or the Pleiades rose when it was new. Dates appear in the Julian or Gregorian calendar of the time. Precession slowly wobbles Earth’s axis, shifting star positions by about 1° every 72 years, and every star drifts on its own path. Cosmic Compass combines the Vondrák long-term precession model with proper motions from the Hipparcos catalogue. Planets are calculated with VSOP87, the theory used by professional observatories. AS THE BUILDERS SAW IT Near the horizon the air absorbs starlight. Cosmic Compass places each star where it first becomes visible, following Alexander Thom’s work on the British stone rows. THE MOON’S SECRET CYCLE Every 18.6 years, the Moon reaches its most extreme rising and setting points: the lunar standstills. Monuments from Scotland to New Mexico were aligned to them. Cosmic Compass detects them and marks the standstill points around every site. EVERY SITE ON THE MAP Your sites appear on a satellite map of the world. Open a site and a compass ring shows its lines, the Moon’s standstill points and where each line’s star rose in the year you choose. Move through time and watch the stars travel along the horizon. HOW IT WORKS Point your iPhone along an alignment and tap to capture. The answer appears in one sentence, with the horizon drawn as a night sky. Below it: what lies on your line, what lies near it, and how it was calculated. A Celestial Convergence shows when a star and a planet share the same line. FEATURES • Capture alignments with compass, GPS and camera • 21 navigational stars including Sirius, Vega, the Pleiades and the Hyades • Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon • Any year from 5000 BC to 3000 AD • Precession and proper motion for true historical positions • Lunar standstill detection • Satellite site map with moving star marks • The Moon tonight on the home screen • Star Catalog with time travel • Save upcoming alignments to your calendar • Export to Google Earth as KML • Featured sites including Stonehenge, Callanish, Chimney Rock, Uxmal, Teotihuacan, Angkor Wat, Dendera and Versailles • Works offline in the field • Designed for normal, large and foldable screens & iPhone Duo WHO IS IT FOR? Anyone who stands at an ancient site and wonders: what were they watching? Heritage enthusiasts, travelers, students and educators, field researchers, astrophotographers planning star-rise shots, and anyone curious about the sky above their own home. YOUR DATA, YOUR RESEARCH Your sites are stored in your own iCloud Drive and sync across your devices. Nothing is shared, no account needed. START EXPLORING The ancients built with the stars in mind. Let Cosmic Compass reveal what they knew.