Astronomy Portal to the Heavens, Deep Sky and Universe

Stellarium - Photo-Realistic Sky Generator

Stellarium is a free software available for Windows, Linux/Unix and MacOSX, created by Fabien Chéreau. It renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time. With stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. I highly recommend this program for the beginner. Although this is not a complete astronomy software package, it is a very easy to use tool to discover the night sky with.This program makes learning the stars and constellations a joy. Pull up your local sky tonight and plan an observation session. Stellarium is small in size and simple to use.

Features :

• New! Over 120000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue with name and infos for the brightest ones.
• Planets in real time, with a powerfull zoom mode to see them like in a telescope.
• Drawing of the 88 constellations with their names.
• Drawing of more than 40 messiers objects (Orion, M31 etc..).
• Photorealistic Milky Way.
• Ground, fog, and landscape.
• Star twinkling.
• Grids in Equatorial and Azimuthal coordinates.
• Time control (real time and accelered time modes).
• Graphical menu for simple utilisation.
• Clikable stars, planets and nebulas with informations.
• Ecliptic and celestrial equator lines.
• Smooth real time navigation.
• Windowed and fullscreen modes.

Requirements :

• Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP or Linux/Unix or MacOSX.
• A 3D Card with a support for OpenGL. At least a Voodoo3 or a TNT2 is recommended for very smooth animation.
• A dark room for realistic rendering : details like the Milky Way or star twinkling can't be seen in a bright room.

Related Links

Freeware
Stellarium web page