Portal to the Universe
| Category | Price | Seller | Device |
|---|---|---|---|
| Education | Free | ESO European Southern Observatory | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
If you wish to test how much cosmic knowledge the new, lighter and slimmer iPad can access at any point in spacetime, this is the app for you! The Portal to the Universe aggregates news, blogs, video podcasts, audio podcasts, images, videos and more from hundreds of sources.
The free application allows users to:
- find out in real time what’s new and exciting in astronomy and space exploration
- access the Portal to the Universe offline
- search for articles on the Portal to the Universe
The Portal to the Universe is a project sponsored by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the International Astronomical Union and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Portal to the Universe App is an open source app designed and developed by ESO with Víctor R. Ruiz (linotipo.es). The project coordinator is Lars Holm Nielsen (ESO).
Reviews
Awesome Astronomy!
RobertInLA
This is a great way to stay on top of all of the latest astronomy news. Portal to the Universe collects together all of the key astronomy press releases as they appear from all of the major institutions across the world. These are the authoritative sources so it's a great way to get the real story. The newspaper-style layout on iPads is an excellent addition!
For Want of a Nail
Bozocity
As good as it is to have all the headlines collected in one app, it's nearly useless on iPod Touch in its current state: (1) Must add a landscape view to the Web browser, because the text is too small to read when limited to portrait. (2) Browser needs to be faster. (3) Crash upon closing Web pages must be fixed. Currently useful only for skimming headlines.
Wonderful
aehric
This app is great. It places a wealth of astronomical news and information at your fingertips. Love it!
Awesome!
sharemail64
All the info I was looking for on the cosmos. For a good star gazing/constellation identifier app, try "A Starry Night."
Just what I was looking for, but the text is too small! Please fix!
AstroPaul
Portal to the Universe This has a good interface--with a good set of science new stories. However, the set of headlines, photos, etc. take up too much of the screen. As a result, one has to scroll through page after page (each with only about 4 or 5 photos/headlines on it) to find what one wants. There should be a text only mode for headlines, perhaps with mini photos, that could show a dozen or so stories. Yet, the real problem is that the text in the stories , especially on many of the pages one goes to, is far too small to read comfortably! There is no way of resizing the text with reflow! The opening headline, short paragraph view text is OK, though we could still use a font size control for it. But the real problem is that many, if not most, of the stories, blogs, etc., that one goes to have far too small text, and the pinch-zooming biz puts most of the text off the screen, so that you are forever scrolling back and forth! I realize that's partly due to the web site one goes to, but there needs to be a way of making the text bigger and having it reflow within the visible screen! Various browsers now can do it. But there's no excuse not to have font resize-reflow within the app itself! As it stands, alas, it's unreadable and unusable! 2 stars and deleted. Hope the developers fix this!
Portal to the Universe font size
Kn9cvu
The font size needs to be able to be increased for those of us that have visual challenge. Other than the font size the App rates 5 stars.
