Stellarium

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.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

The light polution simulation (composite image)

Stars, nebulae, the equatorial grid

Zoom in on Saturn and its moons

Fisheye view of the sky, with constellation art displayed

Selecting observer location

The dance of the planets above Hurricane Ridge

features

Sky
■ Default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
■ Extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
■ Asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
■ Constellations for 15 different cultures
■ Images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
■ Realistic Milky Way
■ Very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
■ The planets and their satellites

Interface
■ 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
■ Equatorial and azimuthal grids
■ Star twinkling
■ Shooting stars
■ Eclipse simulation
■ Supernovae simulation
■ Skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

Customizability
■ 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...

Download

Windows 32 bit
Windows 64 bit
Mac OS X 64 bit
Ubuntu