Stellarium (computer program)

Infobox Software
name = Stellarium



caption =
developer = Fabien Chéreau
latest release version = 0.10.0
latest release date = 24 September 2008
latest preview version =
latest preview date =
operating system = Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
platform =
genre = Educational software
license = GPL
website = [http://www.stellarium.org www.stellarium.org]

Stellarium is a free software planetarium, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. It uses OpenGL to render a realistic sky in real time. With Stellarium, it's possible to see what one cannot see with the naked eye, binoculars or a small telescope.

Stellarium is developed by the French programmer Fabien Chéreau, who launched the project in the summer of 2001. Other prominent developers include Robert Spearman, Johannes Gajdosik, Matthew Gates, Nigel Kerr and Johan Meuris, who is responsible for the artwork.

Stellarium was featured on SourceForge in May 2006 as "Project of the Month" [cite web |url= http://sourceforge.net/potm/potm-2006-05.php|title= Project of the Month - May 2006 - Stellarium|accessdate=2008-09-25 |date= May 2006| publisher = SourceForge]

Features

Stellarium contains a wide variety of features.

ky features

* over 600,000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue and the Tycho-2 Catalogue
* extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
* asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
* constellations from ten cultures
* images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
* realistic Milky Way
* very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
* planets of the solar system's and their major moons

Interface

* zoom
* time control
* multilingual interface
* scripting to record and playback shows
* fisheye projection for planetarium domes
* spheric mirror projection for personal domes
* graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
* telescope control

Visualization

* equatorial and azimuthal grids
* star twinkling
* shooting stars
* eclipse simulation
* skinnable landscapes
* spherical panorama projection

Customisability

* Deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts etc can be added.

ee also

*Cartes du Ciel
*Celestia
*NASA World Wind
*KStars
*XEphem

External links

* [http://www.stellarium.org Official website]
* [http://porpoisehead.net/mysw/index.php?pgid=stellarium_user_guide User Guide]
* [http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page Official wiki]
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/stellarium/ Stellarium] at Sourceforge.net
* [http://freshmeat.net/projects/stellarium Freshmeat project page]

Notes