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If you are a sticky person and have boundless interest about space, then Stellarium is the perfect thing for you. A stellarium is a three-dimensional map of the stars, typically centered on Earth. Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. The Stellarium team has announced the release of Stellarium version 0.11.3.

When someone clicks on a star, planet, or satellite, he/she get information on its distance from Earth and magnitude. It’s even better looking at the sky without using binoculars or telescope. It’s being used in planetarium projectors. You just need to set the coordinates. With Stellarium you can make the illusion more realistic adding atmosphere effects and views including the ground. Moreover, you can point to a star using the computer mouse and the program will show the information about that star like name, distance, magnitude and position in the sky.

Using the mouse wheel people can zoom in and take closer look at the stars. Since the program simulates its movement in real time when a person moves, so are the stars. On the other side, Stellarium lets people show or hide the constellations, its names and art, add or subtract atmosphere, trace the Azimuthal and Ecuatorial Grid, add or subtract the view of the ground and cardinal points, view or hide Nebulas, search and go to a selected object, go to red mode (night). In fact, people can even move freely around the entire sky using the mouse, and then pick a star that interests them to find out more information about it.

Stellarium Key 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 twelve 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
# skinnable landscapes, now with spherical panorama projection

Customizability

# plugin system adding artificial 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…

The free open source program for Windows, Macs, and Linux lets people do truly amazing things. Try the application. Don’t forget to write about your experience below in the comment box.

Source : Stellarium

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