Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.
Stellarium key features:
Sky
- default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
- extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
- asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
- constellations for twelve different cultures
- images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
- realistic Milky Way
- very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
- the planets and their satellites
Interface
- a powerful zoom
- time control
- multilingual interface
- fisheye projection for planetarium domes
- spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
- all new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
- telescope control
Visualisation
- equatorial and azimuthal grids
- star twinkling
- shooting stars
- eclipse simulation
- skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
Customizability
- plugin system adding artifical satellites, ocular simulation, telescope configuration and more
- ability to add new solar system objects from online resources...
- add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...
Download: Stellarium 0.11.3 | 59.4 MB (Open Source)
Screenshot: >> Click here
Link: Home Page | Release Notes