About

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.

Main Features:

� Over 120000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue
� Planets and major satellites in real time
� Drawing of the 88 constellations with their names.
� Mythological figures of the 88 constellations.
� Textured displaying of more than 100 nebulas

By default the software starts in full screen mode and with the atmosphere switched on. The atmosphere is very realistic because it supports well implemented transparency and also sunrise and sunset simulations. Since this is the main problem of observatories, I take advantage that I use this cool piece of software and turn it off to fully enjoy the simplistic beauty of space.

Stellarium is able to draw the Equatorial and the Azimuthal grid so you can orientate yourself on the map. Anybody would like to be able to locate a constellation in the sky. Now it’s easy to learn to do that. In the bottom left corner of the screen you have buttons for drawing the constellations, their names and even beautiful art that can be displayed to please the eye. If you take a look in the configuration window you’ll see that it gets even better because other sky cultures can be used.

Stellarium supports several types of projections so it can be used for a lot more than just the desktop computer. An advanced fisheye projection can be used in planetarium domes, a spherical mirror projection is available for those who own a dome and I can also see that a stereographic projection is available. For your own computer, a perspective projection should be used.

Try it then! The sensation of realism is great with this software. The interface looks nice and behaves well and stable with Open GL. The textures are really enjoyable. The support for scripting greatly increases versatility.