Catch the Sky: Meteor Shower

Stargazing as a catch-them-all game: the board is the real sky over your house. Every night Catch the Sky picks three things that are actually up: the Moon at its phase, the brightest planet, a star or a shape in season, a shower on its peak. You go outside, hold up the phone and swing toward one. The reticle warms as you close in. Hold it for a second and the sky gives it up — a flash, a chime, and the pin drops onto your board. THE BOARD Eight Moon phases, five planets, the brightest stars, eight shapes, ten meteor showers. Caught pins in colour, the rest waiting. Streaks count nights out, not taps. Badges for a full Moon cycle, all five planets, a week of nights running. Some of it you can catch this week. Some of it you wait months for, because that is when it is up. THE CATCH Point the phone. Ticks quicken, a tone rises, the ring tightens. It uses the compass and the motion sensors, so you are really aiming at the thing, not tapping a picture of it. THE PLANISPHERE The star wheel astronomers have turned for four hundred years, made into something you can spin with a finger. Tonight's sky sits inside the horizon ring exactly as it is right now: the bright stars in their colours, the Milky Way where it really runs, the Moon with its real phase, the planets on their tracks. Turn the ring and the night unfolds under your thumb, hour by hour, with a click at each one. THE ROOM IS THE SKY Open it at noon and the app is daylight blue. At dusk it is apricot at the horizon. At night it is indigo. It follows the real Sun where you are. HONEST Every position is computed on your phone from published algorithms and checked against NASA's ephemeris to a few arcseconds. The bright stars come from the Yale catalogue, the showers from the International Meteor Organization. Only things that are actually up; if the sky is not dark yet, it says when it will be. No account, nothing sent, bought once.