Polar Finder
This utility helps you solve this problem by graphically showing you the current position of the Polaris. The application tracks and draws the position of the Polaris (or Octant) in real-time and also displays its hour-angle, the local sideral time, current local time and the longitude of the place. The longitude can be entered manually or obtained using the built-in GPS. The view on the display can be mirrored to match the view in your polar finder scope. Key features are as follows:
• Northern, southern hemispheres
• Naked eye, telescopic view
• Customizable marker angle
• Support for: Astro-Physics, AstroTrac, Ioptron, Losmandy, Skywatcher, StarAdventure, Takahashi and Vixen eyepiece reticles
• Precession
• Night vision mode
• Enter longitude of your place manually or via built-in GPS
Note: On some new devices running Android 4.x the preferences menu can be reached via pressing and holding the Recent Apps Button
- which is a ‘soft key’ (not the Home button). On Galaxy Tabs there are three buttons at the bottom. The middle one is the main, hardware button. The task manager is just on its left side. Press and hold for about two whole seconds on it, and then the menu comes up.
Category : Tools
Reviews (21)
Overall good software, works as intended. I use it for iOptron Skytracker pro. One issue is with the color of the Polaris When used with phone wrapped with red Gelatin sheets, to preserve dark adaption, green is completely filtered and the star disappears. So I have to remove the sheets, adjust and put it back. My phone has an amoled display.
I just installed this after reading the reviews and comparing it to other Android apps and it looks very promising. The only reason for only 4 stars is that the reticle for the Skywatcher EXOSII polar scope is not included. I hope to have some clear skies soon and would like to be able to use this app. Any ideas how I can? Can the reticle be added?
The new update is awesome since it supports pinch to zoom! That's a huge benefit for people that wear reading glasses! I use it to polar align my iOptron Skytracker Pro tracker and it works great. I do wonder why the latitude isn't displayed any more though.
running Android 8.0 on Samsung galaxy 7. Cannot bring up anything other than reticle screen. Searched web and cannot find any instructions for operation other than one short video that does not help much. Glad to hear others can get it work but no luck here. Pretty much useless.
It seems to work correctly when you set your preferences and "longitude source" to Manual because that is the only way it works. For some reason it doesn't read the information from GPS even though the permission is given.
Refunded this garbage as quick as it installed.. no setting to be seen. And when I finally found them by restarting the phone. They didn't even seem to update when I changed to southern polar as it still displayed Polaris. Save your money and time and bypass this app altogether.
this app does nothing. when i open the app all i see is the polar radical but nothing is there to view. I have tried turning my phone to landscape mode and still i have no luck. Edit/Update 10/20/19: I am not too sure what I did in the menus or if you guys did something on the back end but now this app is working great.
Seems to work very well, though I have not tested it yet. Will edit my review once I'm able to see the results after a while. I can say the app works fine on my galaxy s21 ultra running the latest Android available.
I have paid twice now for this app. 1st time I downloaded it I had the same issues as other people with the GPS being enabled but the app does not register it. After deleting and paying to re download again, it still has the same issue.
can not get to preferences menu on A Galaxy note 8. a bit useless without any preference options. read instructions - it says use recent apps button. It brings up recent apps (surprise surprise!) l and not preferences
Working fine now. 《OLD REVIEW Used to work fine and acquire a fix (latitude & longitude) in seconds. Now on the very same phone it takes over 4 minutes and my other apps that need GPS work in seconds. Not happy.
Useful app for polar alignment. But it would be even easier if all four octants would be visible in all scopes. Especially, only sigma octantis is drawn for iOptron, when there is no real reason not to draw all four is it ? Sure, official instructions only use sigma, but there is no reason to not use all four for visual assistance.
Same here it used to work well, but now if I'm not on a WiFi the app is not able to get lat and long. It has all the required permissions. I'm sad it was a perfect tool
Eventually managed to find settings menu. App still can't see GPS, though permissions granted. Uninstalled, but no refund, so stuck with it. Syscaninit is a far better app.
All good except the night vision mode could be improved, there is a large white caption PolarFinder on the top and the menu is all white font.
Cannot get to any of the menus on current Android. No pull down no menu buttons, nothing. Instructions talk about quote newer quote Android 4, and tell you to use buttons that no longer exist.
Garbage app. Doesn't work, doesn't update the illustration on screen. Don't waste your time.
My only complaint is that I could not get the GPS coordinates to come up on the screen in one of my phones. The other Stylo 2 an identical phone the GPS coordinates are available.
GPS works now after manually enabling permissions in the phone settings. An automatic prompt would be nice to avoid running into this issue.
Once in the tools screen it was not possible to return to the display screen thereby making the app completely useless!
Updated Review: Menu button started appearing magically. The app didn't appear to update and the only thing I gave it was time, but when the menu icons actually appear and you can configure the settings the app is great and works wonderfully. I recently used it to polar align my iOptron Sky Tracker Pro. Would give it 5 stars, but the fact that I couldn't configure it for the first few days until the app suddenly decided it would start drawing the menu icon makes me bring it down to 4. Old Review for Historical Purposes: Useless on a Pixel 3 with Android 9. There is no menu button.