Why limit yourself to your small screen on the phone? Run Star Walk – Night Sky Map and Stargazing Guide, an app by Vito Technology, best experienced on your PC or Mac with BlueStacks, the world’s #1 Android emulator.

This app feels like having a little planetarium on the screen. It paints the sky in real time so users can point around and watch constellations, planets and satellites glide into view, and the Time Machine feature lets them scroll forward or back to see how the sky looked last week or will look next month. The night mode is gentle on the eyes with a red tint, and there are different visual layers for X ray, infrared and the visible spectrum which make the map more than just pretty dots. The augmented reality overlay is neat when a device has a compass, but on a PC with BlueStacks the mouse and keyboard make it easy to spin the sky and zoom in on objects.

It is friendly for school projects or casual curiosity, with short facts, images and links to more detailed entries for each star or planet. The events calendar lists meteor showers, eclipses and moon phases so users can pick a night to watch. It runs without the internet which is handy for bringing astronomy outside, and there is an optional subscription for deeper catalogs if someone wants that. Overall it is calming, informative and simple to explore, the kind of app that makes the sky feel not so distant.

Ready to experience Star Walk – Night Sky Map and Stargazing Guide on a bigger screen, in all its glory? Download BlueStacks now.