The first major update of the American Museum of Natural History: Cosmic Discoveries iPhone App was released on February 15 as part of an ongoing effort to create a gallery of the universe that fits in the palm of your hand. The updated app features five new chapters, which combine fascinating images with in-depth descriptions of astrophysical phenomena, the people who discovered them, and the technology that makes it all possible.
The new stories describe the extremes of star formation (“Massive Stars” and “Brown Dwarfs”), galaxies like our own Milky Way (“Spiral Galaxies”) and the dense clumps of stars that swarm around them (“Globular Clusters”), as well as astronomical phenomena caused by runaway thermonuclear explosions (innocuously called “Novae”).
Download the app today in order to automatically be notified about new updates via the App Store. More updates will be released every few months.
Learn more about the app here, and download it for free from iTunes here.
Looking for the perfect way to fit a dinosaur under the tree?
Today, the American Museum of Natural History launched DINOSAURS iPAD:The American Museum of Natural History Collections, the Museum’s first app designed specifically for the iPad. DINOSAURS: iPAD expands on the Museum’s inaugural app, DINOSAURS:The American Museum of Natural History Collectionsfor iPhone® and iPod®, by offering even more in-depth information and larger images of eight favorite dinosaurs: Allosaurus, Anatotitan, Apatosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus, Protoceratops Stegosaurus, and Styracosaurus, as well as accounts of their discovery by such famed dinosaur hunters as Barnum Brown, Walter Granger, and Peter Kaisen. Over time, the app will be updated with new chapters to cover all 36 dinosaurs in the Museum’s collection.
DINOSAURS: iPAD also features an opening screen mosaic of nearly 1,000 separate high-resolution images and unique social networking functionality, encouraging aspiring paleontologists of all ages to explore the Museum’s world-famous fossil collection and to engage in real-time conversations with other users from home, in the field, or in the classroom.
The latest in a series of apps that highlight the Museum’s storied collections and bring its world-class holdings to a global audience, DINOSAURS: iPAD can be purchased for $2.99 at the iTunes Store. All proceeds will directly benefit the Museum’s scientific and educational programs.
DINOSAURS iPAD is also a fun, interactive way to expand and refresh dinosaur knowledge in advance of the Museum’s major new exhibition, The World’s Largest Dinosaurs (April 16, 2011–January 2, 2012), which will take visitors beyond the bones and into the amazing anatomy of a uniquely super-sized group of dinosaurs who thrived for 140 million years: the long-necked and long-tailed sauropods, which ranged in size from 15 to 150 feet long. With innovative, interactive exhibits–including a life-sized, detailed model of a 60-foot Mamenchisaurus–The World’s Largest Dinosaurs will draw on the latest science to take visitors inside these giants’ bodies and answer the intriguing questions of how such extremely large animals breathed, ate, moved, and survived.
The American Museum of Natural History’s Explorer, a groundbreaking free app for iPhone and iPod touch that is part navigation system, part personal tour guide, is already garnering rave reviews.
Explorer is “nothing less than state-of-the art,” writes Gizmodo’s Kyle VanHemert. “I roamed around the fourth floor of the museum this morning with the Explorer as my guide…. it was an excellent adventure.”
Using the Museum’s new public WiFi system, Explorer pinpoints a user’s location and offers turn-by-turn directions to exhibits, cafés, restrooms, and other facilities as well as information about more than 140 objects and specimens, custom tours, and a dinosaur treasure hunt. Visitors can create their own tours on the spot, share their adventures by posting to Facebook and Twitter, and bookmark favorite objects to receive links with more information to explore from home.
The app can be downloaded for free to iPhone or iPod touch devices, and visitors can also borrow one of more than 350 devices from the Museum at no charge.
“While many museums have released apps in the past few years—including the Louvre, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Graphic Design Museum in Breda, The Netherlands—this is by far the most robust we’ve seen,” writes Lauren Indvik on Mashable, a news site for social and digital media, technology, and web culture. “We’re especially impressed that the Museum is ensuring that the technology is available to everyone by offering both devices and tech support to visitors.”
