Stellarium
DESCRIPTION:
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.
FEATURED:
sky
- default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
- extra catalogues with more than 177 million stars
- default catalogue of over 80,000 deep-sky objects
- extra catalogue with more than 1 million deep-sky objects
- asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
- constellations for 20+ 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
- tails of comets
- iridium flares simulation
- eclipse simulation
- supernovae and novae simulation
- 3D sceneries
- 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…
If you were ever curious to see live satellites, or far away objects in the Universe, or even see in advance how the sky would look like, then Stellarium is a very beautiful and useful app for the job.