New app Luna uses AI and astronomy to guide stargazers, then tells them to put phone away

Luna is a new stargazing application designed to minimize screen time by encouraging users to look at the actual night sky. The app, built for mobile devices, uses the on-device Gemma language model to answer questions about celestial objects. Every answer is cross-checked for factual accuracy against a real-time astronomy engine that calculates positions based on the user's location and time. Luna provides features like dark sky site navigation and personalized alerts, but its core function ends with prompting the user to put their phone down and observe. It was recently tested in Bangalore, where it successfully identified stars and planets.