Windows 8 App to Find Information About The Universe
Tour The Universe is a free Windows 8 app that allows you to browse through a large database of information concerning the universe, including everything from stars, galaxies, planets, moons, space stations and what not! The app when launched presents you with an interface where you can choose from the object in space whose information you want to view. The app has a slider which allows you to change the distance of the object from the starting point (Earth). Single clicking on an object reveals information about it, whereas double clicking on it will show you the images of the same. The app also has a collection of videos which you can view related to the object whose information you are viewing. These videos are fetched by the app via YouTube.
Tour The Universe is available for free from the Windows App Store.
Features of Tour The Universe for Windows 8:
When you install and launch Tour The Universe on your Windows 8 or your Windows 8.1 device, you will be presented with an interface which resembles the below screenshot.
You can see the various planets, moons etc. via small thumbnails at the bottom of the screen. You can click on these thumbnails to reveal more information about these objects. You can also double click on the thumbnails at the bottom to view a full screen image of the object (planet, Moon or galaxy) that you double clicked on. If you look closely at the bottom of the screen, you will be able to see a slider which you can slide around to see more and more distant objects. The app shows the information in increasing distances in terms of light seconds, light minutes or light years. The farthest visible object is at a distance of 13.8 Billion light years!
You can see that I have adjusted the slider at the bottom of the screen to show relatively far away space objects. Above, you can see a galaxy which is 9 billion light years away! If you look at the right side of the screen, you can see certain buttons that allow you quick access to look up information related to the object you are viewing on the web. Links include the ability to allow you to read more about the object on Wikipedia, view images of the object, see videos, or look up the object online via Ask.com. Let’s suppose we want to see more information about the object, and hence we click on the Wikipedia button.
You can see above that Wikipedia opens up within the app itself. Similarly, if you choose to view videos, the app opens up the video via YouTube within the app itself!
The cross mark at the top right corner allows you to close the video player interface, or any other interface within the app for that matter and thus, takes you back to the main screen of the app. Overall, this concludes the how to on using the Tour The Universe app!
The verdict:
Tour The Universe is a great app that you can download and use on your Windows 8 or your Windows 8.1 device for browsing information about the vastness of the universe and the various objects in space. The app is ad free, and provides quick links to look up more information about the interstellar galaxies, planets and what not on YouTube, Wikipedia, and even do a web search on Ask. Overall, this is a great app that truly deserves some recognition!
I rate this app a 4 out of 5!
Get Tour The Universe.