Stellarium – open source planetarium

Stellarium is a desktop planetarium that renders a realistic three-dimensional view of the night sky for any location and time.

It is useful both for learning astronomy and for planning observations. The view can reproduce what is visible with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope, with extensive control over time, location, projection and displayed celestial objects.

Stellarium combines huge astronomical catalogues with realistic atmospheric effects, multiple sky cultures, telescope control and a substantial collection of observing and simulation tools.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• Default catalogue of more than 600,000 stars, with optional catalogues expanding coverage to more than 220 million stars using Gaia DR3 data.
• More than 80,000 deep-sky objects by default, with an extended catalogue containing over one million objects.
• Constellations, asterisms and calendars from more than 40 sky cultures, together with constellation artwork and extensive historical astronomy data.
• Realistic rendering of the Milky Way, atmosphere, sunrise, sunset, star twinkling, meteors, comet tails, eclipses, novae and supernovae.
• Full 6D astrometry for many bright stars, including position, proper motion, parallax and radial velocity, together with modelling of selected binary-star movement.
• Displays planets and their satellites, exoplanet locations, artificial satellites and DSS/HiPS all-sky surveys.
• AstroCalc provides ephemerides, positions, phenomena, eclipses, graphs, observing tools and other astronomical calculations.
• Telescope Control can send slew commands and receive mount positions, with support for direct connections and systems including INDI, ASCOM and RTS2.
• Ocular simulation reproduces views through configured telescopes, eyepieces, sensors and binoculars.
• Supports fisheye and spherical-mirror projections for planetarium domes, together with detailed 3D sceneries and custom landscapes.
• Extensible plugin system adds facilities including telescope control, satellites, oculars, observing tools, remote control and object visibility.
• Scripting and HTTP remote-control interfaces support automated presentations, demonstrations and externally controlled planetarium sessions.
• Cross-platform support – runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Website: stellarium.org
Support:
Developer: Fabien Chéreau, Alexander V. Wolf, Georg Zotti, Guillaume Chéreau, Ruslan Kabatsayev, Worachate Boonplod, Henry Leung, and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0 / v3.0

Stellarium is written in C++. Learn C++ with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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