skyterm is billed as a beautiful, real-time terminal-based astronomy application that brings the night sky to your command line. Built with Go and the Bubbletea framework, skyterm delivers a stunning celestial experience without leaving your terminal.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Terminal-native – Designed for the terminal from the ground up, not a desktop app port.
- Lightning fast – Minimal CPU/memory compared to OpenGL astronomy applications.
- Keyboard-driven – Efficient navigation once you learn the keys.
- SSH-friendly – Perfect for remote observatory operations.
- Offline-capable – Core star catalog bundled, no internet required.
- Beautiful rendering – Color-coded stars by spectral type, constellation lines, and more.
- Real-time planets – See the current positions of planets, the Moon, and Sun.
- Deep sky objects – Explore Messier catalog objects right in your terminal.
Website: github.com/craigderington/skyterm
Support:
Developer: Craig Derington
License: MIT License
skyterm is written in Go. Learn Go with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Astronomy Software | |
|---|---|
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| Gaia Sky | Astronomy visualization desktop and VR program |
| Celestia | Real-time space simulation |
| AstroImageJ | Tool for astronomical image analysis and precise photometry |
| Skychart | Prepare different sky maps for a particular observation |
| KStars | Desktop planetarium for KDE |
| OpenSpace | Interactive data visualization software |
| Aladin Desktop | Interactive sky atlas |
| Virtual Moon Atlas | Real-time moon observation |
| Ginga | FITS image viewer and toolkit |
| Digital Universe Atlas | Standalone 4-dimensional space visualization application |
| XEphem | Motif based ephemeris and planetarium program |
| mars-sim | General purpose simulator |
| Cosmonium | 3D astronomy and space exploration program |
| Tenmon | FITS and XISF image viewer, converter and indexer |
| Kosmorro | Calculate your ephemerides |
| Astra | Observatory control system |
| astroterm | Terminal-based star map |
| Skyviewer | Displays HEALPix-based skymaps |
| skyterm | Terminal-based astronomy program |
| ORSA | Framework for celestial mechanics investigations |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
 Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |