Sporting a database of thousands of stars, nebula and galaxies, Distant Suns has earned the reputation of both having one of the most realistic displays of the night sky, while being one of the easiest to use astronomy programs available for the most casual sky watcher and serious telescope jockey alike.

Features include:

•Best tech support in this and parallel universes

•Thousands of pinpoint stars scintillating like diamond dust in the palm of your hand (but not nearly as scratchy)

•Realistic ghostly band of the Milky Way

•All 88 constellations with articles on their mythology

•All 9 planets (yes, we feel that little Pluto got a bad rap so in the Distant Suns universe it is still a planet)

•Sun and Moon

•GPS aware

•What's Up? Gives a quick snapshot overview of where all of the important stuff is

•Easy one-handed operation.

•Point and Identify mode reveals the hidden data for each of the stars, planets and deep-sky wonders

•Up to date Planetary data

•IM the author with astronomical questions. And he may answer if he's not napping. AIM Handle: lazyastronomer. Also on twitter at distantsuns.

What do the paid versions have that this doesn't?

• Universal version so it runs on both the iPhone and iPad (Distant Suns 3 only)

• The ability to change date/time and accelerate time to study the heavenly motions

• Up to 300,000 stars, down to magnitude 10

• Mythical figures for all constellations

• The ability to fine tune the star's sizes and images from simple to stunning

• Be able to filter out dimmer stars to match your local sky

• Compass support for iPhone 3GS, 4 and the iPad. Just aim the phone at the sky and see what you're looking at.

• Augmented Reality: displays the stars on top of your phones video image

• Nightvision mode keeps your eyes dark-adapted when outside at night

• Smoothly slews to each object when selected

• Limits the current-event alert to one showing.

• Additional landscape images

• Third toolbar for ease of navigation

• Extra in-depth data about each object

"The most beautiful computer program anywhere! Thanks!!" comment received on Twitter

The Universe just got, well...uh..."smaller."