I never really got into star gazing because the most I was ever taught in school about astronomy is that several stars form constellations and let’s face it, this is nowhere near useful even to start that hobby. That’s not to say that I have never been fascinated by the sky and everything beyond our Earth, quite the opposite. So when I noticed that there was an application in Ovi Store that would help me kick-start my new hobby, I instantly jumped on the chance to review it.

Norbsoft SkyMap for your Nokia device stands true to its name, providing a complete map of the sky above our heads. But it doesn’t stop there, there are different layers, more information, and even two viewing modes.

The first time you launch SkyMap from the Poland-based Norbsoft, you should immediately go to the Settings pane to specify your current location and the local time. The location can be entered by manually crunching the latitude and longitude, or by selecting from a database of cities, or automatically thanks to the GPS. In the Settings also, you can specify which layers you want to see on your phone’s screen: planets, stars, constellations, sun and moon, messier objects, grid azimuth and labels. If you don’t know what half of these are, like me, I’d suggest you enable everything, it just adds to the fun.

SkyMap then takes a few seconds to calculate the position of all the celestial objects, and then gives you a 360 degree view starting with North. Now I would have expected SkyMap to use the built-in compass on devices like the Nokia N97 Mini or E72 to tell me exactly what I’m looking at, but it doesn’t which is mainly the only shortcoming of this application and forces me to use a separate compass app to determine exactly what direction is North then switch to SkyMap.

The sky view of SkyMap highlights the different objects with their names. Whether on a touchscreen Nokia device or not, you can select an object and the map zooms and shows information about it: Name if available, Brightness, Azimuth and Altitude. There’s also the option to connect to the Internet and download even more information about it. Another way of exploring the sky is by using the Search option for a certain object if you know its name.

One thing to love about SkyMap is that it also offers a Night Mode that is appropriate when you don’t want to be offset by the contrast between your phone’s bright screen and the dark sky. The other thing is the nice precise zooming feature that lets you use the * and # shortcuts on non-touch devices, or tap and hold then move up or down on touch devices, to zoom exactly to the level you want.

If the developers figure out a way to make use of the built-in compass and automatically use the GPS location without having to fiddle with settings first, SkyMap could become the ultimate star gazing guide.

At $2.99 (USD) from the Ovi Store, Norbsoft SkyMap a pretty fair bargain if you’re interested in astronomy, or simply want to answer your son’s question when he/she asks “what is that star there?” I’ve been using it quite a lot lately and it’s a pleasure to finally be able to say “That’s Polaris” with conviction.

About the author: Rita is a Lebanese pharmacist passionate about technologies and mobile devices. She has been an active member of the Nokia & Symbian sphere for over three years, writing for Symbian-Guru, FoneArena and NokiaLB. You can also follow her on Twitter @khouryrt. We’re very happy to have her contributions once again here at the Daily App blog.