KStars
KStars is a desktop
planetarium for KDE.
It depicts an
accurate simulation of the night sky, including stars, constellations,
star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, all 8 planets, the Sun, the Moon,
comets and asteroids. You can see the sky as it appears from
any location on Earth, on any date.
The user interface is highly intuitive and flexible. The
display can be panned and zoomed
with the mouse, and you can easily identify objects and track their
motion across the sky. KStars includes many powerful features, yet
the interface is clean and simple and fun to use.
KStars 1.5.0
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Price
Free to download
Size
Part of KDE-Edu
License
GNU GPL v2
Developer
Jason Harris, Heiko Evermann, Thomas Kabelmann,
Pablo de Vicente, Jasem Mutlaq, Mark Hollomon
Website
edu.kde.org/kstars
System Requirements
KDE
Support
Sites:
Handbook,
Forums
Selected
Reviews:
Linux
Magazine
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Features include:
- 130,000 stars to 9th magnitude
- 13,000 deep-sky objects (Messier, NGC, and IC
catalogs)
- Milky Way
- 88 constellations
- Guide lines such as the celestial equator, the horizon and
the ecliptic
- Control telescopes and cameras, using the
elegant and powerful INDI protocol
- Supports several popular telescopes including Meade's
LX200 family and Celestron GPS
- CCD cameras, webcams, and computerized focusers
- Interface to a number of tools with
which you can learn more about astronomy and the night sky
- Astrocalculator
tool provides direct access to many of the algorithms the program uses
behind the scenes, including coordinate converters and time calculators
- AAVSO
Lightcurve Generator tool will download a lightcurve for any of the
6000+ variable stars monitored by the American Association of Variable
Star Observers (AAVSO)
- Plan an observing session using our
Altitude vs. Time tool, which will plot curves representing the
Altitude as a function of time for any group of objects
- What's Up Tonight? tool that summarizes the objects that
you will be able to see from your location on any given night
- Solar System Viewer, which shows the current
configuration of the major planets in our solar system
- Jupiter Moons Tool which shows the positions of Jupiter's
four largest moons as a function of time
- Context-sensitive popup menu
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to Scientific Home Page | Return
to Astronomy Home Page
Last Updated Saturday, April 13 2013 @ 05:32 PM EDT
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