Stellarium

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Stellarium
Original author(s)Fabien Chéreau
Developer(s)Alexander Wolf
Georg Zotti
Marcos Cardinot
Guillaume Chéreau
Bogdan Marinov
Timothy Reaves
Florian Schaukowitsch
Initial release2001
Stable release
0.21.0[1] / 28 March 2021
(24 days ago)
Repository
Written inC++ (Qt)
Operating systemLinux, Windows, macOS
PlatformPC, Mobile
Size337 MB (Linuxtarball)
257 MB (Windows installer)
236 MB (macOS package)
TypeEducational software
LicenseGNU GPLv2[2]
Websitestellarium.org

Stellarium is an open-source free-softwareplanetarium, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. A port of Stellarium called Stellarium Mobile is available for Android, iOS, and Symbian as a paid version, being developed by Noctua Software. All versions use OpenGL to render a realistic projection of the night sky in real time.[citation needed]

So, lets start Stellarium. After fresh installation, Stellarium sets the location to Paris, France, but you can change the location to be anywhere on earth or even on planets. We will explain different ways to set the location where we discuss Location Setting. Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It is available for Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. Stellarium/stellarium. Stellarium is an open-source free-software planetarium, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2, available for Linux, Windows, and macOS.A port of Stellarium called Stellarium Mobile is available for Android, iOS, and Symbian as a paid version, being developed by Noctua Software. Www.eyesonthesky.com This Stellarium tutorial shows how to quickly get started the date, time, speed and navigation functions of left/right/up/down motions.

Stellarium

Stellarium was featured on SourceForge in May 2006 as Project of the Month.[3]

History[edit]

In 2006, Stellarium 0.7.1 won a gold award in the Education category of the Les Trophées du Librefree software competition.[4]

Stellarium User Guide

A modified version of Stellarium has been used by the MeerKAT project as a virtual sky display showing where the antennae of the radiotelescope are pointed.[5]

In December 2011, Stellarium was added as one of the 'featured applications' in the Ubuntu Software Center.[6]

Planetarium dome projection[edit]

The fisheye and spherical mirror distortion features allow Stellarium to be projected onto domes. Spherical mirror distortion is used in projection systems that use a digital video projector and a first surface convex spherical mirror to project images onto a dome. Such systems are generally cheaper than traditional planetarium projectors and fish-eye lens projectors and for that reason are used in budget and home planetarium setups where projection quality is less important.[citation needed]

Various companies which build and sell digital planetarium systems use Stellarium, such as e-Planetarium.[7][non-primary source needed]

Stellarium Scope

Stellarium

Digitalis Education Solutions, which helped develop Stellarium, created a fork called Nightshade which was specifically tailored to planetarium use.[8][9][non-primary source needed]

VirGO[edit]

VirGO is a Stellarium plugin, a visual browser for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Science Archive Facility which allows astronomers to browse professional astronomical data. It is no longer supported or maintained; the last version was 1.4.5, dated 15 January 2010.[10][non-primary source needed]

Stellarium

Stellarium Mobile[edit]

Stellarium Mobile is a fork of Stellarium, developed by some of the Stellarium team members. It currently targets mobile devices running Symbian, Maemo, Android, and iOS. Some of the mobile optimisations have been integrated into the mainline Stellarium product.[citation needed][11][non-primary source needed][dead link]

Screenshots[edit]

  • Constellation art in version 0.6.2

  • Constellation art in version 0.10.1

  • Mars and its moons in Stellarium 0.14

  • Equatorial and Azimuthal Grids in Stellarium 0.14

  • Screenshot of Night Mode in Stellarium 0.14

See also[edit]

Stellarium.org Download

Stellarium.com
  • Space flight simulation game

References[edit]

  1. ^'Stellarium v0.21.0 has been released!'. 2021-03-28. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  2. ^'~stellarium/stellarium/trunk : contents of COPYING at revision 9976'. bazaar.launchpad.net.
  3. ^'Project of the Month – May 2006 – Stellarium'. SourceForge. May 2006. Retrieved 2008-09-25.
  4. ^'The third Free Software Awards placed under the sign of the international'. Les Trophées du Libre 2006 website. Archived from the original on 2008-12-21. Retrieved 2009-02-16.
  5. ^'Virtual sky display in MeerKAT control room'. Ska.ac.za. Archived from the original on 2012-04-23. Retrieved 2012-06-16.
  6. ^'Software Centre app picks for December'. Ubuntu App Developer. Developer.ubuntu.com. 2011-12-14. Archived from the original on 2012-06-26. Retrieved 2012-06-16.
  7. ^'Stellarium Planetarium Software'. E-Planetarium website. Archived from the original on 2008-12-01. Retrieved 2009-02-15.
  8. ^'Nightshade Astronomy Simulation Software'. Digitalis Education Solutions official website. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  9. ^'Nightshade Astronomy Simulator'. Nightshade official website. Retrieved 2010-01-11.
  10. ^'VirGO, The Visual Archive Browser'. ESO Science Archive Facility. Retrieved 2012-11-21.
  11. ^'Stellarium Mobile'. Noctua Software. Retrieved 2014-03-14.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Stellarium.
  • Official website
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stellarium_(software)&oldid=1017374888'

Interface Guide

Contents

  1. 1 View Navigation
  2. 3 View Control Bar

This section explains Stellarium interface to control the sky view.
So, lets start Stellarium. After fresh installation, Stellarium sets the location to Paris, France, but you can change the location to be anywhere on earth or even on planets. We will explain different ways to set the location where we discuss Location Setting.

If we start Stellarium, when it's night, we will get a night view like this:



and if we start Stellarium when it's day time we will get a view like this:



Time can be changed to be now, in the past or in the future. Details are explained in the Time/Date Setting section.

View Navigation

Navigating the Sky

To move around the sky, you can use the arrow keys to move right or left, up or down. You can also hold the left mouse button and pan your view as desired.

Zooming

To zoom in or out use the Page Up and Page Down keys or use the mouse wheel. To have a slower zooming speed use Shift+Page Up and Shift+Page Down.

Object Selecting

To select a star or any sky object click with the left mouse button. On the upper left corner, the information relevant to the selected object will be shown. To unselect, click with the right mouse button anywhere and the selection mark along with the information will be off the display.

Auto Zoom

Use the forward slash( / )to zoom in to the selected object. To zoom out use the backward slash ( ).

Status Bar

At the bottom, there is a bar showing the status of the view. It contains the location, the field of view, the display refresh rate in Frames Per Second, the date and time. The date and time display format can be changed through the Time Zone plugin.


View Control Bar

When you move the mouse to the lower edge of Stellarium window, A horizontal bar will be revealed. This bar has buttons that controls how the view will be displayed. The buttons are either lighted or dimmed (on or off). Lighted buttons means that their function is active.


When the mouse pointer goes over any button, it will be emphasized with a square and a description of its function will be shown along with the equivalent shortcut key over the horizontal bar.

The two small triangles at the lower left corner serve to fix the horizontal and vertical bars (cancel auto hide) when you press them.

Quit [Ctrl + Q]

This button will close Stellarium.

Increase time speed [L]

With each click of this button, time passing rate will increase. You will see stars, the moon, the sun and other objects move faster. Pressing L on the keyboard has the same effect.
The date and time on the status bar will change faster.
To return to normal rate you have to click the Normal time rate button or press K on the keyboard.

Set Time to Now [8]

If you change the time to be in the future or in the past, you can return to current time using this button. Current time is according to your computer system clock. The equivalent key is 8.

Set Normal Time Rate / Time Pause [K]

If you have increased or decreased time rate, you can return to normal time rate using this button. The equivalent key is K. Note that if the time rate is already normal, indicated by this button being on (lighted) , clicking it will pause the time and the button will change to . Click again to return to normal time rate.

Decrease time speed [J]

With each click of this button, time passing rate will decrease. You will see stars, the moon, the sun and other objects move slower, stopped or faster in a backward motion.
If time rate is normal, clicking this button once will stop time. The date and time on the status bar will stop.
If time is stopped, clicking this button will cause time to go in the past. Additional clicks will cause the time rate to increase but in a backward manner. The date and time on the status bar will go backward faster.
If time rate is fast forward, clicking this button will slow it down. The date and time on the status bar will go slower.
To return to normal rate you have to click the Normal time rate button or press K on the keyboard.
Pressing J on the keyboard has the same effect.

Plugin Buttons

The next set of buttons are for plugin activation. Plugins are additional features, where you have the choice of including or excluding them from Stellarium. If the plugin add features to sky display and information, a button for it will appear in the horizontal bar. You can see the list of the plugins in the Configuration window, Plugin tab. Plugins are explained in detail in the Plugins section.
Two plugin buttons are included with the horizontal bar by default. The Satellites and the Ocular plugin.

The Satellites [Ctrl+Z]

Click this button to display the artificial satellites in the view.

The Oculars [Ctrl+O]

Click this button to be able to use the Oculars plugin, which enables you to see the sky as if you're looking through a telescope eyepiece.

Full Screen Mode/ Window Mode [F11]

Click the lighted button to use window mode.

Night Mode

Night mode is useful when Stellarium is used outdoors to see real night sky. If the screen is bright, the eyes will need some time to adapt to the dark sky. Using this mode turns the screen colors into red which has minimal effect on eye adaptation at night.

Center on Selected Object [space bar]

When you click on a star or any other sky object, it will be selected and its information will be shown on the upper left corner of the view. If you want to center this object, click this button. The button will turn to be lighted, and it will stay on until the view is panned or the object is deselected.

Equatorial/Azimuthal Mount mode [Ctrl+M]

The default mode is Azimuthal mount with the button off. If it's on then the mode has been changed to equatorial. Click the on button to return to Azimuthal mount mode and have the earth fixed and sky objects move (as seen in real life). You will use this mode more often.
Click the off button to have your view with fixed equatorial coordinates. Using this mode, the sky view will be fixed and the earth will rotate.
This mode is useful when you want to compare a printed sky chart with what you see in the screen. Sky charts use equatorial coordinates and will have celestial north at the top. International Astronomical Union IAU provides online a full set of sky charts for the 88 constellations.
Also this mode is useful when you use Stellarium screen shots to produce your customized star charts.
A sample sky map using equatorial mount mode with Hammer-Aitoff projection option.

Planets Labels [P]

If you want to hide labels of planets, moon and the sun click this button. To show them again click .
Planets with labels Planets without labels

Nebulae [N]

To show nebulae, star clusters and their labels click . To hide them click .
Nebulae shown along with their labels

Atmosphere [A]

This button will make stars visible in day time canceling atmospheric effect.
Atmosphere off Atmosphere on

Cardinal Points [Q]

This toggle button will show and hide the Cardinal points indicators (N, E, S and W) for north, east, south and west.

Ground [G]

This toggle button will show a ground landscape. If you want to see the sky below the horizon, turn this button off.
Ground on Ground off, Saturn is below horizon.

Azimuthal Grid [Z]

Use this button or the equivqlent key to show or hide the Azimuthal grid.
Azimuthal grid, altitude lines parallel to the horizon line (altitude 0°) and Azimuth lines (degrees from north).
See Horizontal coordinate system.

Equatorial Grid [E]

Use this button or the equivqlent key to show or hide the Equatorial grid.
Equatorial grid. Dec 90° is at celestial north, Dec -90° is at celestial south, Dec 0° is at celestial equator. RA is angle measured in hours from the Vernal equinox. See Equatorial coordinate system.

Constellation Figures [R]

Use this button or the equivqlent key to show or hide the constellation figures.

Constellation Labels [V]

Use this button or the equivqlent key to show or hide the constellation names.

Constellation Lines [C]

Use this button or the equivqlent key to show or hide the constellation lines.
Constellation figures, lines and labels are shown.