Discover Stellarium: Your Free Open Source Planetarium
Stellarium offers users an immersive planetarium experience right on their computers. This free and open-source software provides a stunningly realistic 3D representation of the night sky, mirroring what can be seen with the naked eye, through binoculars, or via a telescope. The application is widely utilized in professional planetarium projectors, making it a go-to tool for both enthusiasts and astronomers alike.
Key Features of Stellarium
- Realistic sky simulations including detailed sunrise and sunset visuals
- A comprehensive default catalog featuring over 600, 000 stars
- Ability to download extensive catalogs with data on over 210 million stars
- Complete records for all objects in the New General Catalogue (NGC)
- Images of nearly all Messier objects along with a detailed view of the Milky Way
- Artistic illustrations representing all 88 modern constellations
- Inclusion of various cultural constellations from more than twelve different civilizations
- Simulations of solar and lunar eclipses
- Photorealistic landscapes, with additional options available online
- Support for scripting using ECMAScript, complete with demonstration scripts
- Extensibility through plugins, including:
- Artificial satellites plugin, updated from an online TLE database
- Ocular simulation plugin to visualize objects through specific ocular types
- Solar System editor plugin importing comet and asteroid data from the MPC
- Telescope control plugin compatible with Meade LX200 and Celestron NexStar
Latest Version Highlights
- Significant enhancements to sky cultures, including added stars, improved constellation lines and labels, and updated translations reflecting both historical and modern traditions.
- Introduction of the Sky Culture Maker plugin, enabling users to create and edit personalized sky cultures directly within Stellarium.
- AstroCalc has received major updates, introducing tools for calculating custom Sun/Moon altitudes, rise/set/transit selections, and enhanced graph management.
- Core software improvements include more realistic solar textures, better performance in texture loading, and refined constellation labels and planetary HiPS support.
- Expanded and updated catalogs covering stars, deep-sky objects (DSOs), pulsars, novae, exoplanets, satellites, comets, and minor planets, along with refreshed planetary nomenclature and location data.
- Numerous bug fixes and optimizations have greatly increased stability and performance across all platforms, improving rendering quality, hardware detection, and language/script handling. For further details, refer to the [full release notes].
Get Started with Stellarium
To download the latest version, click here: Stellarium 25.3 (64-bit) | File Size: 437.0 MB (Open Source)
For more information, visit the Stellarium Home Page or explore alternative versions for other operating systems.
For a visual preview, check out the available screenshots of Stellarium in action.
Source: Neowin
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