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:
- Realistic simulation of the sky, sunrise and sunset
- Default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
- Downloadable additional catalogues for up to 210 million stars
- Catalog data for all New General Catalogue (NGC) objects
- Images of almost all Messier objects and the Milky Way
- Artistic illustrations for all 88 modern constellations
- More than a dozen different cultures with their constellations
- Solar and lunar eclipse simulation
- Photorealistic landscapes (more are available on the website)
- Scripting support with ECMAScript (a few demo scripts are included)
- Extendable with plug-ins: 8 plug-ins installed by default, including:
- artificial satellites plug-in (updated from an on-line TLE database)
- ocular simulation plug-in (shows how objects look like in a given ocular)
- Solar System editor plug-in (imports comet and asteroid data from the MPC)
- telescope control plug-in (Meade LX200 and Celestron NexStar compatible)
Version 0.15.0 release notes:
In memory of the Stellarium team member Barry Gerdes.
- Version 0.15.0 is based on Qt5.6. Starting with this version, some graphics cards have been blacklisted by Qt and are automatically forced to use ANGLE on Windows.
- We introduce a major internal change with the StelProperty system.
- This allows simpler access to internal variables and therefore more ways of operation.
- Most notably this version introduces an alternative control option via RemoteControl, a new webserver interface plugin.
- We also introduce another milestone towards providing better astronomical accuracy for historical applications: experimental support of getting planetary positions from JPL DE430 and DE431 ephemerides. This feature is however not fully tested yet.
The major changes:
- Added StelProperty system
- Added new plugin for exhibitions and planetariums - Remote Control
- Added new skycultures: Macedonian, Ojibwe, Dakota/Lakota/Nakota ,Kamilaroi/Euahlayi
- Updated code of plugins
- Added Bookmarks tool and updated AstroCalc tool
- Added new functions for Scripting Engine and new scripts
- Added Miller Cylindrical Projection
- Added updates and improvements in DSO and star catalogues (include initial support of The Washington Double Star Catalog)
- azimuth lines (also targetting geographic locations) in ArchaeoLines plugin
- Many fixes and improvements...
- In addition, we prepared a new user guide.
Download: Stellarium 0.15.0 | 151.0 MB (Open Source)
Download: Stellarium 64-bit | 161.0 MB
Screenshots: >> Click here
Link: Stellarium Home Page