Pocket Stars

If you have a Pocket PC or Windows Smartphone, Pocket Stars is a real treasure of an application. It not only takes the place of those phone book sized nautical almanacs used for celestial navigation, it’s a great reference for the night sky that you might actually have in your pocket when you can’t remember which star is Aldebaran and which is Arcturus. It’s a remarkably feature rich application, including moon phases, rise and set times, various handy navigation calculators, animated orbital paths and much more. Pocket Stars is the fine work of Jay Alan Borseth, a sailor and software developer. With a free 15 trial period to evaluate the software, a money back guarantee, and a very reasonable price of $20, it’s an excellent value. See his website, Nomad Electronics, for more.