Musicians have long been interested in space. ‘Telstar’ by The Tornados put producer Joe Meek on the map; Elton John captured the loneliness of space travel in ‘Rocket Man’; Brian May of Queen not only did a PhD in astrophysics but also had an asteroid named after him; and David Bowie, for a good few years, pretended he was actually from space.

But have any of these astronomy-adjacent pop stars ever had an entire constellation? No. But prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP) have. Sort of.

As part of the marketing for their Out Of This World: Live (1970-1997) boxset, the band and their label, BMG, have partnered with the stargazing Star Walk 2 app to create the special “ELP mode” within the app so users can see a special ELP “constellation”.

It was only active in the app for two weeks – starting on 29th October – and ran with tracks from the live boxset playing in the background. The in-app text comes in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese, showing the global reach of the band (as well as their intergalactic reach).

You have to go into setting and activate the “ELP Mode”. As soon as you do that, and before you can play around with the app, you get a huge plug for the album. You then have to hunt for the sparkling ELP logo in the sky and, when you eventually track it down, you can explore it to the sounds of the band.

It is a fun activation and one that is, at heart, a bit overblown – which makes it perfect for a prog rock band. If you are going to release a compilation album that runs to 10 LPs and contains tracks with titles like ‘Pictures At An Exhibition: Promenade Part 1 / The Gnome / Promenade Part 2 / The Sage / The Old Castle / Blues Variation’, ‘Pictures At An Exhibition (Continued): Promenade Part 3 / The Hut Of Baba Yaga / The Curse Of Baba Yaga / The Hut Of Baba Yaga / The Great Gates Of Kiev’ and ‘Piano Concerto, Third Movement: Toccata Con Fuoco’ then there is no way you’d go in with something small and humble.