Aladin Desktop is an interactive sky atlas.
The software lets users visualize and manipulate digitized astronomical images or full surveys, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from the Simbad database, the VizieR service and other archives for all known astronomical objects in the field.
Aladin “Desktop” is the regular client. It provides all functions and it runs as a classical software
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- 20 000+ data collections (DSS, SDSS, PanSTARRS, Skymapper, Gaia, Simbad, NED, VizieR, …)
- Zoom; Pan; Rotate;
- Overlays;
- Multi-views;
- Many projections (Sin, Tan, Aitoff, Mollweide, etc);
- Any coordinate systems (FK4, FK5, ICRS, GAL, SGAL, ECL);
- No image size limit;
- Million source overlays,
- Most astronomical formats (images: HiPS, FITS, PDS, HEALPix map, JPEG, PNG; cubes (HiPS, FITS) are supported.
- Tables: HiPS, FITS, VOTable, S-extractor, IPAC TBL, ASCII, etc; regions: XML, STC, DS9, IDL).
- Powerful tool boxes (images: color map, contours, crop, re-encode, color composition, pixel computation, resampling, astrometrical calibration, mosaic, photometric measurements, etc.
- Catalogs: filter, split, merge, x-match, scatter plot, etc); VO standards: JSAMP, TAP, CS, SSA, SIA, etc.
- Extendable: plugins, VOApp interface.
- Fully scriptable.
- Internationalization support.
Website: aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinDesktop
Support:
Developer: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg (CDS)
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

Aladin Desktop is written in Java. Learn Java with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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