Homework 4

One of the biggest disadvantages of living in a big city is that we miss out on the beauty that is the night sky. Stars and planets are not as visible anymore because of the enormous amount of light we are clouding our atmosphere with. Constellations are a more or less abstract concept for people who grow up in places where the night sky is a dull black with no visible stars. It truly is marvellous to be able to point out our phones at the sky to view and identify what lies beyond. I find it to be an excellent teaching tool to get kids interested in astronomy.

But does it serve a bigger purpose? I don’t believe it does yet. We will have to add more layers of information for AR to be useful in this context. In a future with AR glasses, this is something that will be seriously considered. We could chart flight paths, and in a future with abundant drone usage, this could be incredibly useful in identifying what is flying over our heads. The sky's the biggest canvas we have in our life. We can only hope that when we look up in the future, AR is used to paint it for the beauty that it should have been and not used to fill our view with ads.

Screenshots of the NightSky

In my experience, the moon neatly aligned with the actual moon (though it took a few calibration attempts) and Saturn was too close to the horizon to be superimposed on the Sky.

1. The moon:-

2. Saturn:-