The publisher of the Luminos 9 App has announced that the app will be discontinued in January 2023. The company will continue to produce Luminos Pro. Luminos 9 will continue to be updated for the next year, including ensuring that it’s compatible with iOS 16. Compatibility with iOS 17 and beyond is not guaranteed, but Luminos 9 is likely to continue working with future iOS updates.
As the publisher notes, “In 2023 we will be discontinuing development of Luminos 9 in order to focus our efforts on developing and supporting Luminos Pro. We’ve put together a FAQ to help people understand what that means for their copy, which can be found here.”
Users will still be able to utilize the Luminos Pro app available on iOS. It offers an all-in-one mobile astronomy app, with a wide range of features for star gazing, observing with a telescope, and exploring the galaxy in 3D. Luminos Pro has vast databases of nearly every type of object and uses them to give custom recommendations for making the most of your time under the sky.
Luminos Pro contains 250 million Gaia stars, the complete Washington Double Star catalog, every Celestrak satellite database, comet and asteroid databases from the Minor Planet Center, and tens of thousands of deep space images positioned and scaled in the sky view.
Users receive easy access to planets and moons, bright star lists, meteor shower charts, 5,000 years of solar and lunar eclipses, constellation details, and if you want to know what or where something in the sky is you just raise your device and motion tracking will identify or locate your target.
Telescope users will appreciate Luminos Pro’s telescope control and equipment management. They can connect to many brands of computer-controlled telescopes for easy pointing directly from Luminos Pro and use the equipment calculator to help choose optimal combinations for your observations. Select a camera and use an accurately-scaled overlay on the sky view to calculate the ideal centering and rotation for framing your astrophotography targets.
Luminos Pro also provides an excellent educational experience as it allows users to travel in 3D to see stars in an alien sky, then experience the scale of the space with a seamless 3D flight back home. Luminos Pro makes it fun to explore the planets and moons of the solar system with 100 megapixel maps and complete surface feature databases from the USGS. Users can also explore exoplanets and their star systems, or ride along with a spacecraft like Voyager 1 throughout its journey, or see what the Pleiades looks like when you spin it around in 3D.
Existing Luminos users will find that Luminos Pro has all the same features as Luminos 9, plus exoplanets, 250 million Gaia stars, double and variable stars, spacecraft, and a new more streamlined interface with new features like altitude charts, list filters, and enhanced viewing suggestions. Plus, Luminos Pro is free to use for existing Luminos users through July 31, 2022.
Luminos Pro is offered with three subscription options. All subscriptions start with a free month and can be cancelled at any time, even during the free month.
You can learn more here.
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