A state of the art planetarium application for the iPhone has been released by independent iPhone developer Frederic Descamps. The application is designed to help users without any astronomy skills and only basic north/south knowledge find objects in the sky.

On the iPhone 3G the app uses the GPS receiver to find the users location and display the constellations that can be seen from the location. The catalog has over 120,000 visible stars and planets with their satellites. The application retails for $11.99.

"Many planetarium applications exist, but who wants to carry a laptop into the garden to observe the stars?" said Descamps of his inspiration to develop the Starmap. "I wanted a simple map on my iPhone(TM), to use by simply sliding my finger tip on the screen." No other platform today offers this ease of use.

Via Star-Map