KStars

Infobox Software
name = KStars



caption = Screenshot of KStars showing the night sky from Hanover
developer = KDE developers
latest release version = 1.3.0
latest release date = 2008
platform = KDE
operating system = Unix-like
platform =
genre = Educational software
license = GNU General Public License
website = http://edu.kde.org/kstars/

KStars is a planetarium program for the KDE desktop for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides an accurate graphical representation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 2.5 million stars (with additional addons), 13,000 deep sky objects, all 88 constellations, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids. It has features to appeal to users of all levels, from informative hypertext articles about astronomy, to robust control of telescopes and CCD cameras, and logging of observations of specific objects.

KStars has been packaged by many Linux/BSD distributions, including Red Hat Linux, Suse, Mandriva, and Debian. Some distributions package KStars as a separate application, some just provide a kdeedu package, which includes KStars. KStars is distributed with KDE as part of the kdeedu "Edutainment" module.

The latest version of KStars is 1.3.0, released with KDE 4.0. Released under the GNU General Public License, Kstars is free software.

See also

*Celestia
*Stellarium
*XEphem

External links

* [http://edu.kde.org/kstars/ KStars project webpage]
* [http://kstars.30doradus.org/index.php KStars Community Forums]