Stellarium is a free open-source desktop virtual planetarium software from France, supports Unix/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms. It uses OpenGL to render the stars in real time, and generate a virtual 3D sky on your desktop, so the stars effect is almost completely the same as you observe the stars sky with only naked eye, telescope or astronomical telescope.

Stellarium also has a day and night changes, you can adjust the date or time, in order to see the sky of different seasons. On the other side, the reason Stellarium can be regarded as a virtual planetarium application is it allows to calculate the positions of the sun, the moon, the planets and stars in the sky according the to the time and the place of observers, and displays them exactly. We can also use it to draw constellation, emulate astronomical phenomena (such as meteor shower, eclipse and Lunar eclipse, etc.).

In addition, Stellarium not only can be used as a teaching aid for learning the night sky knowledge, but also can be regarded as a auxiliary tool for the amateur astronomers to observe the stars, or just to satisfy some of our curiosity.

Because of its high quality graphics, some planetarium use Stellarium in the actual showings of astronomical phenomena. And some observers even use Stellarium to draw the star maps they used in their articles.

Key Features

Feature List
Sky
  • default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
  • extra catalogues with more than 177 million stars
  • default catalogue of over 80,000 deep-sky objects
  • extra catalogue with more than 1 million deep-sky objects
  • asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
  • constellations for 20+ 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
Visualization
  • equatorial and azimuthal grids
  • star twinkling
  • shooting stars
  • tails of comets
  • iridium flares simulation
  • eclipse simulation
  • supernovae and novae simulation
  • 3D sceneries
  • 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...

Official Demo Video

System Requirements

  • Android 6.0+

Edition Statement

AppNee provides the Stellarium Mobile Plus Edition multilingual paid full versions for Android.

Related Links

Download URLs

License Version Download Size
Freeware Latest  (mir) n/a
Stellarium Mobile
Plus Edition v1.12.0 131 MB
(Homepage | SourceForge)