Whether it’s the Southern Cross over Australia, the union of Jupiter and Saturn in year minus six, or the next full moon encounter with Mars: the events show what’s happening in the sky. The best free planetarium program is Stellarium, which was started by Fabian Chereau more than twenty years ago. The astronomy-loving programmer has also worked on software for ESA’s Gaia satellite.
The representation of the starry sky is extremely realistic – with horizon haze, spectacular sunrises and sunsets, shooting stars and much more. The constellation shows the dance of the moons of Jupiter as well as the constellations of different cultures. As Sky fans continue to develop new elements, the program continues to become more diverse.
time travel to the future or past
The 300 Megabyte Standard Edition shows over 600,000 stars and countless star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies. Additional catalogs increase the number of stars to over 150 million. To create a correct sky view from this amount of data, only a few very simple trigonometric calculations are necessary.
The program enables long travel in time to the future or past. But this applies to Stellarium as much as any planetarium software: The view is as beautiful as the one on the monitor – nothing beats a real starry sky.
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