[AstroNet] Android apps for astronomy: input requested

[Kevin Govender]

Greetings

The Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) has
developed several Android apps that can be used at school and university
level for astronomy education and training. We would like to call out to
you as a potential user community to both test these apps (listed below
with URLs) and send us:
1. input on your experiences on these existing apps
2. send us ideas for new apps that you would like to see developed.

Through a partnership between South Africa and India, there are several
possibilities to collaborate on the further development of these apps and
new development of other apps which you may have in mind. If we develop a
"wish list" of apps then we can try to plan their development.

The list of apps with brief descriptions and URLs follow (thanks to Santosh
from IUCAA):

-------------------------------------------

*VOI Cosmology Calculator:*
VO-India releases Android Cosmological Calculator v1.0 Beta. Given user
input values for the Hubble constant, Omega(matter), Omega(vacuum) and
redshift, the Cosmological Calculator returns the co-moving radial distance
and volume, the angular-size distance at the specified redshift, the scale
(kpc/arcsec), and the luminosity distance. One may also choose between a
flat and open universe. The Cosmological Calculator has been adapted from
Ned Wright's Cosmology Calculator.
URL: http://voi.iucaa.ernet.in/~voi/voandroidcc.htm


*VOI Name Resolver:*
The Name Resolver application allows there user to input the name of
celestial object and returns basic information about the object such as
RA/DEC values associated with that object and some other information such
as redshift, proper motion, parallax etc. using either the SIMBAD or NED
service.
URL: http://voi.iucaa.ernet.in/~voi/voandroidresolver.htm


*VOI Stat-Lite:*
Stat-Lite - an Android application that provides an interactive and easy
introduction to the concepts of Descriptive Statistics and Curve Plotting.
It includes basic features like loading VOTable & ASCII format data set and
performing some basic statistical analysis such as correlation tests,
summary statistics etc. Some of the novel features of this application
include graphs with multi-touch gesture support using which the user can
pan and zoom graphs to study specific areas, ability to study effect of
outliers on regression fits by adding them using a simple interface etc.
The interface & content has been designed for under graduate students. It
uses 'Apache Commons Math' library for statistical calculations and a third
party charting API called 'AChartengine' for rendering graphs. As mentioned
above, users can add or remove points by gestures like short and long press
and see how the graph responds in real time The curve plotting module,
apart from having all the major categories of pre-defined functions, has
the ability to plot any arbitrary mathematical function by writing it down
as a combination of the functions in the existing library.
URL: http://voi.iucaa.ernet.in/~voi/voandroidsl.html


*VOI ConeSearch:*
We have implemented the cone search on android platform. This allows user
to query any one of catalogs from the registry. User can use NED and SIMBAD
name resolver to resolve the object name. It also allows user to view or
save data onto their android device in form of VOTable. This cone search is
working more or less
similar typical cone search for desktop applications. Here is splash screen
which loads the catalogues from registry and will be shown into this scree.
As this is displayed in limited resources we are displaying first few
records and as user access the pages it will load accordingly. Once user
selects the service and entered the object position along with the search
radius. Once user provides all input parameter and send request to resolve,
its starts the populating the result into VOTable. Once result is
generated, application will show first few sample records to the user
device. Further user can download as VOTable format or it can be displayed
to user device.
URL: RELEASING ON END OF DECEMBER 2014


*SALT Visibility Calculator:*
This android tool will be divided into different sub-sections
1. Visibility Tab:
This is SALT target visibility tool for android devices. It has the
capability to resolve the celestial object co-ordinate using well known web
services called NED/SIMBAD. One can insert the celestial object and
resolves the co-ordinate using SIMBAD and NED name resolver service. The
default co-ordinate value i.e. Ra/Dec for plotting night and annual
visibility graph will be 0:0:00 & 0:0:0.036.
2. Night & Annual Visibility Tabs:
New graph will be generated as soon as user change the Ra/Dec co-ordinates
from the visibility tab. Night Visibility graph will be generated on device
locally. As user clicks on Night visibility or Annual visibility tab, tool
will generate the respective new graph with updated relative values. Due to
memory restriction of android device, we have created the web module
deployed on VOI server (temporary testing purpose), which generates the
annual visibility graph for requested user. This graph will be displayed as
image file to avoid unnecessary uses of memory.
3. Help & About tabs:
Under the Help tab, we can provide the short description of how to use this
android application as plane text. This text will be more similar to user
guide for this android application. In smaller way we can put the release
note and license related text under the about section.
4. General notes:
For Using the name resolver service and annual visibility graph tool will
use the system default internet connection. e.g. if user's device is
connected with some Wi-Fi network and accessing the internet through it,
then this toll will use the same network connection to avoid user of user
pocket connection.
-------------------------------------------

Please send us your input/ideas.
We look forward to hearing from you
Regards
Kevin


-- 
Kevin Govender
IAU Office of Astronomy for Development
www.astro4dev.org
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