Stellarium

(realistic sky in 3D)

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.

Features

in version 0.9.1

Sky

• default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
• extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
• asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
• constellations for ten 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
• scripting to record and play your own shows
• fisheye projection for planetarium domes
• spheric mirror projection for your own dome
• 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

Customisability

• add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...