Stellarium creates fairly realistic views of the sky. The basic program has over 600,000 stars (roughly up to magnitude 9.9) with another 240 million available as add-ons. This is the only free program that shows constellation groupings for other cultures. Stellarium is a planetarium software that shows exactly what you see when you look up at the stars. It's easy to use, and free. Download Stellarium 0.18.2. Look at the sky on your screen. Stellarium is a marvelous application which will be enjoyed by both those who like astronomy and those who doesn't known anything about stars. It combines a powerful database and a photo-realistic visual engine. Stellarium is a complete virtual. 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.

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Download StellariumScope. Published: Saturday, 08 December 2018 Just a reminder that Stellarium must have the focus in order for the keyboard keys to work. This means that using some other Window other that Stellarium (such as when you do a manual slew using a Windows utility), the Stellarium Window loses focus.

Stellarium Planetarium

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.

Sky

• default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
• extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
• asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
• constellations for twelve different cultures
• images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
• realistic Milky Way
• very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
• the planets and their satellites

Interface

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• 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

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• equatorial and azimuthal grids
• star twinkling
• shooting stars
• eclipse simulation
• supernovae simulation
• skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

Customizability

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• 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...

What's New:

• Added support DMS and DD formats for parallactic angle feature
• Added altitude limitation filter for AstroCalc/Graphs[AltVsTime/ME] tools
• Added visual improvements for AstroCalc/Graphs tool
• Added new time intervals for AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool
• Added computation of ephemeris for all naked-eye visible planets into AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool
• Added GUI for select the color of ephemeris markers into AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool
• Added 2 new scripts (Saturnian and uranian analemmas)
• Added ‘k Pup’ designation to star HIP 37229 (GH: #706)
• Added information about progress of loading on splash screen (GH: #719)
• Added a new skylore for Stellarium: Anutan
• Added support catalog “Southern Stars embedded in nebulosity” (Van den Bergh and Herbst, 1975 - VdBH)
• Added support “Catalogue and distances of optically visible H II regions” (Dickel+, 1969 - DWB)
• Added distances for few LDN objects
• Added support removing shortcuts through config.ini file (GH: #724)
• Added extraInfoString to StelObject: Allows extra info injected by plugins or scripts.
• Added display of Apex/Antapex points (GH: #737)
• Added “observers” for all planets with moons (GH: #736)
• Added IAU constellation abbreviation to object info
• Added 3 new actions
• Added settings for Script Console (GH: #741)
• Added Vanuatu (Netwar) skyculture (GH: #762)
• Added few asterisms (GH: #753, #768)
• Added new one time step into AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool (GH: #758)
• Added few new DSO textures (GH: #756, #780)
• Added support Vec3d into scripting engine
• Added a Messier Marathon script (GH: #771)
• Added support for short weekday display modes in bottom toolbar
• Added GUI option to toggle permanent orbit drawing
• Added hyperbolic comet C/2019 Q4 (Borisov) [2I/Borisov] into default ssystem_minor.ini file
• Added a scripting function for refraction (GH: #778)
• Fixed coloring text issue when formatting output is on
• Fixed saving properties for external software/remote computer in Telescope Control plugin (GH: #702)
• Fixed behaviour of selected ephemeris marker when sorting not for date (AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool)
• Fixed sorting date and time columns for AstroCalc/Ephemeris and AstroCalc/Phenomena tools
• Fixed crash on destruction of static QWidget (GH: #720)
• Fixed small difference of values issue for different time zones for Date and Time column in AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool (GH: #717)
• Fixed stupid conversion bug in hmsToRad function (GH: #716)
• Fixed an asymmetry w.r.t. to the ecliptic latitudes (Moon age)
• Fixed Search Tool/Lists behaviour for VdBH catalog
• Fixed distances for few DSO (GH: #708)
• Fixed Gregorian date issue for AstroCalc (GH: #711)
• Fixed support GPS on macOS (GH: #712)
• Fixed coefficient for the duration of mean tropical year
• Fixed issue for images in description for landscapes: set search directory (GH: #735)
• Fixed tooltip behaviour for Date and Time dialog
• Fixed star name to its source spelling (GH: #729)
• Fixed compiling with GPSD 3.19 [API 8.0] (GH: #733)
• Fixed encoding script files in Script Console (GH: #742)
• Fixed drawing names of asterisms
• Fixed aFOV display in Oculars plugin
• Fixed visual issue in Script Console (white background) with Qt 5.13
• Fixed links for scripting docs (SUG)
• Fixed screen flashing during solar eclipse (GH: #747)
• Fixed core.resetOutput(); method behaviour (GH: #750)
• Fixed AltGr behaviour for some languages on Windows
• Fixed clipping issue for LabelMgr.labelObject (GH: #776)
• Fixed weekday computation
• Fixed rendering planets orbits (GH: #773)
• Fixed error in shape of asterism Red-Necked Emu (GH: #769)
• Fixed proper removing of default secondary shortcut (GH: #764)
• Fixed cross-id error in DSO catalog
• Updated appdata.xml file
• Updated outdated code for names of days and months
• Updated Observability plugin
• Updated list of proper names of stars (IAU approved list)
• Updated Moon age calculation: let’s use geocentric coordinates only for compute of the Moon age
• Updated AstroCalc/PC tool: simplification and colorification for graphs
• Updated AstroCalc/Phenomena tool: small speed-up
• Updated the default color space: StelToneReproducer now use sRGB as target RGB color space (GH: #718)
• Updated GUI for Satellites plugin
• Updated common names for DSO
• Updated common names for stars
• Updated packaging for macOS: Let’s use macdeployqt for creating a MacOS bundles
• Updated nomenclature support: Let’s use compressed nomenclature data to reduce an installation package
• Updated translations
• Updated planetary nomenclature
• Updated Sardinian skyculture
• Updated file handling in Script Console
• Updated HDPI features: enabled scaling fonts on High DPI monitors (GH: #546)
• Updated default shortcuts: changed default shortcut for copying selected object information (Ctrl+C -> Ctrl+Shift+C) to allow use Ctrl+C shortcut for text edit fields for whole planetarium (GH: #748)
• Updated getInfoMap method [scripting engine]: enhanced the getInfoMap method for the Sun (get eclipse data; GH: #747)
• Updated Chinese (Simplified) and Russian translations for Windows installer (GH: #755, #779)
• Updated Bookmarks tool
• Updated default exoplanets and pulsars catalogs
• Updated behaviour on Windows: disable HiDPI scaling in manifest (GH: #763)
• Updated Oculars plugin: improve RA/Dec output for CCD frame
• Code refactoring: type checking/casting clarifications
• Removed FOV plugin (the feature was moved into core of planetarium)

• Been using Stellarium for years now and it's really amazing for studying the stars. Also, if you're in the mood for stargazing but it's cloudy outside, then it's a not too bad substitute.

• Stellarium is a classic, standard de facto, virtual planetarium program for PC.

• The best astronomy Sky Map ever made ! I have many commercial softwares, but Stellarium is one, if not the best of them. So many things it has that it´s impossible to list here. You´d better give it a try, but I know you already have. Great !

• No help menu. Pretty useless for beginners. If you are new to astronomy, like me, you need to look for something more basic - like I will now. Still, only £2.99 wasted. Could be worse.

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