It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

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
  • Spherical 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
  • Eclipse simulation
  • Supernovae 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...

What's New

The major changes of this version:

  • Added low graphics mode
  • Improvements in plugins and AstroCalc tools
  • Improvements in Scripting Engine
  • Updates in Core
  • Behind the scenes, many more minor issues were fixed.

Telescope Users

  • We have identified and fixed some bugs in the TelescopeControl plugin on the Qt6-based releases.
  • Telescope users, please try whether this solves your problems. If not, we are looking for those of you with programming skills to help us fixing remaining issues. Reward possible!

Full list of changes:

  • Added missing stars (GH: #3575)
  • Added ability to following the current position in Search Tool/Position (GH: #3643)
  • Added ability to set a sub-arcminute lower limit for angular size (GH: #3647)
  • Added note on Ephemeris table (GH: #3634)
  • Added special case for SIMBAD/NCP in Search Tool
  • Added ability to toggle visibility HIPS surveys via scripting engine (GH: #3613)
  • Added ability to use comma as decimal separator in Remote Control plugin
  • Added translations to Lithuanian language
  • Added distance and heliocentric distance info for Solar system objects into scripting engine
  • Added major axis, minor axis and orientation angle info for DSO into scripting engine and Remote Control plugin (GH: #3605)
  • Added an option to force low graphics mode (GH: #3590)
  • Added code to automatic updating the TLE sources from Celestrack website (GH: #3588)
  • Added a tabular view for distances of Solar system objects (InfoString).
  • Fixed bug in Meteor shower plugin (GH: #3616)
  • Fixed south azimuth usage in Search Tool/Position
  • Fixed landscape transparency issue (GH: #3512)
  • Fixed alignment for note in AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool
  • Fixed CCD frame rotation after changing language (GH: #3627)
  • Fixed computation of phase angle for satellites
  • Fixed selection the title of observing lists when he is saved or imported (GH: #3623)
  • Fixed a tiny bug in Observing Lists dropdown menu
  • Fixed installation path for manpages in FreeBSD (GH: #3612)
  • Fixed the major digit of version: automatisation has been removed
  • Fixed license data for AppData file according to SPDX License List v3.22
  • Fixed Rise/Transit/Set info (GH: #3602, #3610)
  • Fixed updating Rise/Transit/Set info after switching location if the object was selected in AstroCalc/RTS tool
  • Fixed a serious bug in Observing Lists (GH: #3586)
  • Fix: reduce notification popups in Observing Lists (GH: #3587)
  • Fixed possible issue for transparency in landscapes (GH: #3512)
  • Fixed typo in coordinates of Phoenix Dwarf Galaxy (GH: #3576)
  • Fix: clearing up refs to a few star names
  • Fixed the informational data (InfoString) for comets
  • Fixed visibility for orbital properties in the View/SSO dialog
  • Fixed build without PCH
  • Fixed missing reference.fab files (GH: #3681)
  • Fixed find objects from search history (GH: #3671)
  • Changed core: fall back to fast_float when C++ stdlib doesn't provide from_chars for floats
  • Changed core: use std::from_chars for parsing ints in OBJ files
  • Changed core: updating StelLogger (GH: #3614)
  • Changed SolarSystem: add IAU designation for comets if missing
  • Changed SolarSystem: add the perihel year to the comet name in case of loading older-style ssystem_minor.ini
  • Changed Solar System Editor plugin: allow overwrite if possible (GH: #3641)
  • Changed Exoplanets plugin: switched to use surface temperature for potentially habitable planets
  • Changed Exoplanets plugin: updated priority to selection of objects
  • Changed Meteor Showers plugin: Use NELM for local meteor rate (GH: #3549)
  • Updated Greek (Almagest) sky culture
  • Updated Remote Control plugin (GH: #2995)
  • Updated dependencies: QXlsx 1.4.7
  • Updated dependencies: CalcMySky 0.3.2
  • Updated default list of locations
  • Updated catalog of pulsars
  • Updated translations
  • Updated discovery circumstances for minor bodies of Solar system
  • Updated orbital elements and default list of minor planets and comets
  • Updated list of contributors
  • Updated list of financial contributors
  • Updated nomenclature data
  • Updated SUG: document – low-graphics option
  • Update properties for CPack-generator of DEB packages
  • Updated instructions for building planetarium from the source code
  • Removed fixed sizes from Oculars dialog
  • Removed "scale" option from desktop file
  • Removed outdated translatable lines
  • Removed link to TLE for Starlink satellites with very old orbit data
  • Removed extra shortcuts from (commonuser) desktop in Windows (GH: #3579)