The new Solar System for iPad app is an amazing and extraordinarily attractive resource for amateur astronomers.
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Featured is interactive 3D imagery of the sun, planets and moons. You can touch Saturn's rings (based on images from NASA's Cassini mission), flick through the icy rubble of the Kuiper Belt, or pinch and zoom into Earth to study the continents from above, with or without cloud cover.
Along with an opening song set to space imagery, this app features many well-written articles for each part of the solar system you touch. There are dozens of high-resolution galleries, extensive videos and animated sequences. Check out "How to spot a planet?" and "The real Mars." You also find data for each planet or moon including diameter, mass, volume, gravity and atmosphere.
While relatively pricey, Solar System for iPad is an out-of-this-world digital book that is as informative as it is beautiful. It's a stellar example for other reference app makers on how to best take advantage of the tablet medium
