Stellarium
Published on Sep 24, 2007 at 7:05 pm.
19 Comments.
Filed under amateur astronomy.
Last week, I had a couple of posts where I posted a sky view created using computer software. When I was first learning astronomy, this tool was not available. We had star charts, for sure, but you had to do all the work yourself looking at star charts to try to imagine what the sky would look like. But, today, a computer can calculate how the sky would look and display it. In fact, you can even move the mouse cursor over a star and find out its name and many other things about it. What a wonderful tool this would have been so many years ago! Software like this is called planetarium software, and it really does help to visualize the sky. For some time, I’ve created sky views from a software package called Starry Night Pro. We bought this for the college a few years ago, and it is used in the teaching labs. I really like it. Starry Night Pro is very powerful. It has a lot of features that are very useful for what I do. However, Starry Night Pro costs nearly $150 for a single copy. Now, there are less expensive versions of Starry Night available, but that is not the only type of planetarium software. There is, in fact, a large number of planetarium programs out there competing with one another. Some cost more than others, and some do more than others. The college can buy whatever works best for the lab. But, for my personal computer I’d just as soon go with something less expensive. After all, I live near campus and I can always come to the college to access the computers if I need to, right? In fact, we’ve put Starry Night Pro on a notebook computer to use outdoors with the telescopes. I could use that computer, too, but I’d like to have my own software on my own computer if I can.
And that is where this blog entry is going. I have been using a very good FREE software program called Stellarium. Hey, you can’t get less expensive than free, right? I rather like the features on Stellarium. They are very comparable to the features on many of the planetarium programs that you pay for. Naturally, things like Starry Night do more, but if a simple and good program is all that you need, then Stellarium seems like a very good option. And, I am finding all sorts of things that Stellarium can do that I didn’t know that it could do. Even better, Stellarium comes in forms that will work on Windows machines, Mac operating systems, and even Linux.
Stellarium does a very good job simulating the effects of the atmosphere, it computes the positions of the planets and their moons, and it shows constellations and asterisms. It is open source software, so you can easily customize it to your own needs. It isn’t perfect, but it is good. I’ll still use Starry Night Pro when I need to do something really serious, but otherwise Stellarium is just wonderful. Best of all is that it is not quite the memory and system resource hog that Starry Night is. In fact, I have found that the latest versions of Starry Night often will not run on computers that are a few years old or that have minimal resources. That is a problem for my students, since many of them have computers like that, and we have them do exercises with a version of Starry Night that is packaged with the textbook.
Stellarium gives a good view of what the sky would look like from pretty much anywhere on Earth at any time over a wide range of dates. If you want to know what stars and constellations are which, if you are an amateur planning an observing session, or you have any other need for a basic planetarium software, then this seems good. I wouldn’t use it as a definitive guide for research, of course, but there are plenty of other things that you can use for that. And, if you are looking to do something very complicated and critical, I’d trust other software better. But, if you are looking for a good, decent planetarium program to show you the sky, then give Stellarium a shot. You can’t really go wrong for something that is free, can you?
-Astroprof
Keith on September 24, 2007 at 7:57 pm: 1
I also have become a big fan of Stellarium. I’ve been hoping lately to get started with amateur astronomy but have always been pretty daunted by the task of learning a large number of stars and constellations, especially being right outside of Baltimore city where the skies are always as clear as can be.
Now at least I can get my feet wet first as a virtual astronomer and then venture into the real world once I know my way around a bit.
Astrogeek on September 25, 2007 at 2:16 am: 2
Excellent post. There are a whole host of programs available for *FREE* to the amateur astronomer:
Stellarium (of course)
Celestia ( http://shatters.net/celestia/ )
and “Where is M13″ http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/index.html
are all excellent FREE (did I mention they don’t cost anything?) programs that are readily available for Windows, Mac OS/X and Linux.
Keith on September 25, 2007 at 10:54 am: 3
KStars is option for linux that is worth checking out.
Astrolink [International Edition] » Blog Archive » Astrosphere for September 25th, 2007 on September 25, 2007 at 3:16 pm: 4
[…] What do you use for your skywatching software? Astroprof reviews Stellarium. You can't go wrong with free. […]
Carl on September 25, 2007 at 4:40 pm: 5
Keith you do not need to know all the stars and constellations before getting into astronomy. I know how you feel since I also held back for years. However, at one point I just started looking and imaging. I was surprised at how quickly I started to recognize parts of the sky. You can have fun without knowing where everything is.
AstronomyBuff on September 25, 2007 at 10:29 pm: 6
I love this program. I discovered it about a year ago and use it extensively.
I want to try out the telescope control capabilities, but haven’t had the time yet to figure it out.
In the latest version 0.9 for the mac, they fixed an issue where you can now run the program in window mode instead of full screen. This matters to me because I can use screengrab software to make astronomy videos with.
Let’s face it, the rendering is beautiful in the program, it’s begging to be used in planetarium-style astronomy videos.
Also, if you have an inflatable planetarium and a projector, you can configure this to project everything one the dome.
AstronomyBuff on September 25, 2007 at 10:30 pm: 7
I love this program. I discovered it about a year ago and use it extensively.
I want to try out the telescope control capabilities, but haven’t had the time yet to figure it out.
In the latest version 0.9 for the mac, they fixed an issue where you can now run the program in window mode instead of full screen. This matters to me because I can use screengrab software to make astronomy videos with.
Let’s face it, the rendering is beautiful in the program, it’s begging to be used in planetarium-style astronomy videos.
Also, if you have an inflatable planetarium and a projector, you can configure this to project everything on the dome.
Darren on September 26, 2007 at 6:16 am: 8
I love this little program - although lacking the informative features of starry night, this is a neat and swift little gem to play around with. It does what it says on the tin! It’s a real time map of the sky. You can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of an object. Using grids and stuff, it’s cool to just let it flow across your monitor.
Darren on September 26, 2007 at 6:20 am: 9
PS. Or should i say ‘Let your monitor flow across the sky’
Ed Davies on September 26, 2007 at 10:40 am: 10
I rather like kstars, too, but I think for both powerful and free Cartes du Ciel takes a lot to beat. The current “mainline” version (2.76, I think it is) is Windows only but a new “beta” 3.0, which is not so polished, runs on both Windows and Linux.
A very handy facility in some of these programs is the ability to control goto telescopes. Two LX 200 compatible scopes which I play with from time to time are normally controlled via CdC. Kstars can also control telescopes though I’ve yet to try it out for this.
Burzycki.org » Astrosphere for September 25th, 2007 on September 28, 2007 at 1:01 am: 11
[…] Astrosphere for September 25th, 2007 September 25th, 2007 | Category: Contributors, Astronomy First the photo. Winensky captured this great image of the Moon, using a 7-megapixel camera connected to a 3″ reflector telescope. Click this link to see the whole collection, including a mosaic with several images stitched together. Did any Canadians catch last night’s “Race to Mars”. What did you think of it? Mark Mortimer was good enough to write a review here on Universe Today. Personally, I was so grateful for the careful and accurate presentation of science that I wasn’t too concerned about it being a little boring. I also caught last night’s premiere of Heroes. Now that was boring, and didn’t have the science to back it up. Pamela Gay gets frustrated by television physics as well - she thinks our heroes should be getting a little hungrier. What do you use for your skywatching software? Astroprof reviews Stellarium. You can’t go wrong with free. You’ve got to love the Space Review. Consistently great articles and opinion pieces about space exploration. Check out this one entitled, The rise and fall of great space powers. And here, editor Jeff Faust contemplates Mike Griffin’s recent remarks. Over at Centauri Dreams, Larry Klaes looks at the rise of submillimetre astronomy. […]
Astroprof’s Page » Pocket Stars on October 7, 2007 at 12:46 pm: 12
[…] A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the freeware program Stellarium for computers. It comes in multiple forms available to multiple platforms. You can load the program onto a notebook computer and take it with you into the field. But, sometimes, a notebook computer is a bit much to carry. It might be a bit heavy and bulky, and besides many are rather expensive to be carrying around in the damp conditions that you often find outdoors. But, PDAs are miniature computers, themselves. In fact, a modern PDA has more computing power than the computers that flew the Apollo capsules to the Moon. Over a year ago, I wrote about 2Sky, my favorite PDA program for PDAs with the Palm operating system. But, 2Sky is no longer supported, and that is really disappointing. Also, not all PDAs operated with the Palm operating system. […]
Scott Pinkham on November 5, 2007 at 6:47 pm: 13
If you are interested in using the Windows version of Stellarium to control your telescope, you might check out StellariumScope at http://www.ByteArts.com/stellarium — it’s a free program I wrote which uses the ASCOM drivers and so works with almost any telescope. It also automatically configures Stellarium for you — no need to edit configuration files.
Keith Johnson on June 6, 2008 at 12:40 am: 14
Hi , I have installed Stellarium Scope and have the latest ASCOM platform and telescope driver installed but I cannot get my tellescope connected to stellariumScope.
Do you have a helpfile for this - if not then sadly I’ll be using some other planetarium program to use with my telescope
Astroprof on June 6, 2008 at 2:48 pm: 15
Keith, I am afraid I can’t help you. We use something else here at the college, but I do know some people who use Stellarium with no problem to control scopes.
mr spock on February 28, 2009 at 6:31 pm: 16
stellarium doesn’t do comets? does starry night? is there a free download version of starry night? thx
Astroprof on March 1, 2009 at 12:37 am: 17
Stellarium is a commercial software product. They don’t make free copies of it.
mr spock on March 8, 2009 at 9:22 pm: 18
well, for freeware, this is the best i’ve ever seen…i’ve passed it on to many friends who have also downloaded it and really like it. I’ll get STARRY NIGHT later when I get my new scope. but for checking up on astro-events throughout the year, this is great to help me ’show’ via the phone or internet my not-so-savvy friends who love the mysteries of the sky–
Nodrick on May 5, 2009 at 5:40 am: 19
With regard to telescope control:-use the BytArts plug in for Stellarium (post 13 above) - it fixes the control issues and has a help file.
With regards to comets: you can edit the system file to add the Ephemerides of orbiting bodies.
Go to
c:\program files\stellarium\data
Edit the file system.ini in Notepad and add the following lines to the BOTTOM of the file:
[Lulin]
name = Lulin
parent = Sun
radius = 10
oblateness = 0.0
halo = true
color = 1.0,1.0,1.0
tex_halo = star16×16.png
tex_map = nomap.png
coord_func = comet_orbit
orbit_TimeAtPericenter = 2454842.1414
orbit_PericenterDistance = 1.212289
orbit_Eccentricity = 0.999987
orbit_ArgOfPericenter = 136.8614
orbit_AscendingNode = 338.5353
orbit_Inclination = 178.3730
lighting = false
albedo = 1
orbit_visualization_period = 10401394706.0
Save and close the file, start Stellarium and search for ‘Lulin’.