Sky & Telescope magazine is releasing a new, free application for all Android mobile devices: S&T SkyWeek. The previously-released Apple version of the app will also now be free to download. "We thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate Sky & Telescope’s 70th anniversary year — to make the app available to all astronomy enthusiasts for free," says Joel Toner, V.P. for Publishing of New Track Media, S&T's parent company.

The app is based on the S&T website's popular This Week's Sky at a Glance bulletin, which presents editors' picks of the most exciting things to observe each night, from planetary conjunctions to eclipses to meteor showers. "But it goes beyond that," says S&T editor in chief Robert Naeye. "It gives the user a day-by-day report on the week’s most exciting sky events with a link to an interactive sky chart that tells you when and where to look to see the event."

"We designed the app to be extremely user friendly," says Tim DeBenedictis, whose firm, Southern Stars, developed the app in partnership with Sky & Telescope. It allows users to zoom in and out on the skymap, set a location, pan around your local sky, and go to different times and dates. With a "night mode" option, the app is ideally set up to be an on-site observing tool for astronomy enthusiasts. The app works on Android phones running Android version 2.1 or higher, which includes 95% of Android phones.

To download the Android version of S&T SkyWeek, go to Market on the Droid menu screen and search for SkyWeek.