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.

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
  • Supernovae simulation
  • Skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

Customizability

  • plugin system adding artifical 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 Stellarium team are delighted to announce the release of Stellarium 0.21.1.

The major changes of this version:

  • Updated designations of stars and handling of list of designations and common names those stars
  • Updated Almagest and al-Sufi skycultures
  • Many changes in plugins
  • Many fixes in core and plugins for support HiDPI devices
  • Enhancements in visualization of markings and in scripting engine

There have also been a large number of bug fixes and closes feature requests and enhancements (see full list of changes).

Full list of changes:

  • Added ability to handling Stellarium scripts by file extension on macOS
  • Added disabling the proportional DSO hints in Oculars plugin in eyepiece mode (GH: #1572)
  • Added ability to get the lunar eclipse magnitudes through scripting (GH: #747)
  • Added new plugin: OnlineQueries (GH: #355, #962)
  • Added marker of the center of Earth’s shadow (GH: #1687)
  • Added workaround to displaying labels for umbra and penumbra (GH: #1560)
  • Added an attempt to fix the misplaced location on the planet map (GH: #1026)
  • Added tool to toggle visibility of intercardinal (or ordinal) directions and secondary intercardinal directions
  • Added scriptable method for panning the view a predetermined amount (degrees per seconds)
  • Added option for toggle place of the measurement’ visibility for Angle Measure plugin (GH: #1708)
  • Added actions to intercardinal and secondary intercardinal points
  • Added support proper motion for pulsars
  • Added code to recognition 3 new groups of satellites: IRNSS, TDRSS and QZSS
  • Added 2 new methods into scripting engine
  • Added a splitter in the satellite tab in the Satellites plugin (GH: #1696)
  • Added a reminder in the Description box in the Satellites plugin (GH: #1696)
  • Added ability to load an “old” telescopes (GH: #1651)
  • Added single asterism selection mode (GH: #541, #921)
  • Added meteor shower code/ID to search result table (GH: #1663)
  • Added support untranslatable names (like designations) for stars and DSO (skycultures)
  • Added 3 new scriptable methods into ConstellationMgr class
  • Added few new DSO textures
  • Added cosmetic fix for long list of designations for stars: split the data on few lines
  • Added cosmetic fix for long list of proper names for stars: split the data on few lines
  • Added scriptable methods for isolated selection of asterisms by the name (GH: #541, #921)
  • Added version number in file name for extended DSO catalog to improve data handling (GH: #1433)
  • Added missing ability to saving and loading values for ‘Draw only polygon’ and ‘Thickness of line in pixels’ options (LP: 1923489)
  • Added backward compatibility layer for scripting engine for search and select operation
  • Added scaling factor for line thickness on HiDPI devices (GH: #1618)
  • Added new nomenclature for Solar system bodies
  • Added computation shadow phenomena (Transits of shadow and eclipses) for planets with moons in AstroCalc/Phenomena tool (GH: #1563)
  • Added context for second name of beta Gemini to avoid conflict with constellation name (GH: #1599)
  • Added carbon stars filter for Search and AstroCalc tools (GH: #1583)
  • Added section “Moons of first body” into AstroCalc/Phenomena tool (GH: #1563)
  • Added Polar Circles into ArchaeoLines plugin (GH: #1555, #1573)
  • Added two custom altitude lines into ArchaeoLines plugin (GH: #1573)
  • Added ability to grabbing declination/azimuth/altitude data from selected object into ArchaeoLines plugin (GH: #1573)
  • Added ability to direct selection of locations from Stellarium’s location list into ArchaeoLines plugin (GH: #1573)
  • Fixed correctly saving sensor rotation angle (GH: #1756)
  • Fixed sorting hotkeys info in Help window (almost full synced with Keyboard shortcuts editor) (GH: #443)
  • Fixed scaling planets and the Sun by viewed through eyepiece (GH: #1578)
  • Fixed typo’s in Almagest SC description (GH: #1745, #1746)
  • Fixed display cardinal labels when NLS is disabled
  • Fixed displaying the native names of planets (GH: #1273)
  • Fixed work the method core.setObserverLocation() when planet is not defined (GH: #1749)
  • Fixed display of hotkeys (e.g. native look for macOS’ hotkeys) in Help window
  • Fixed proper names
  • Fixed designation for 2 UMa
  • Fixed UI text issue for binoculars in the Oculars plugin (GH: #1738)
  • Fixed flip issue for compass rose in the Oculars plugin (GH: #1535)
  • Fixed selection the newest added device in Oculars plugin
  • Fixed handling of the designations for variable and double stars
  • Fixed crash for the OnlineQueries plugin
  • Fixed show text in Angle Measure plugin on the HiDPI devices
  • Fixed display multiline AKA list for DSO
  • Fixed compiling INDILib by MSVC2019
  • Fixed crash when any device added into Oculars plugin (GH: #1673)
  • Fixed horizontal & vertical flip defect in Oculars plugin (GH: #1535, #1678)
  • Fixed bug in scripting engine
  • Fixed dead links in Stellarium User Guide (GH: #1694, #1692)
  • Fixed tabbing order in the Satellites plugin (GH: #1696)
  • Fixed cross-identification data for HIP stars (GH: #1657)
  • Fixed visibility of planet labels: the visibility of planet label is depend by extinction magnitude now (GH: #1652)
  • Fixed AstroCalc/Phenomena tool: added missing category for compute shadows phenomena
  • Fixed HiDPI issues in Script Console
  • Fixed show labels in scripts on the HiDPI devices (no need a rewriting scripts for HiDPI monitors)
  • Fixed search Hydra as a constellation and as moon in the Bookmarks tool (GH: #1609)
  • Fixed logical issue in StelSkyDrawer class
  • Fixed displaying cardinals on poles (no cardinals!)
  • Fixed mistakes for designations of double stars from Struve’s appendices catalogs (GH: #1604)
  • Changing visualization an atmosphere on the Galilean satellites: All Galilean satellites has atmosphere, but too thin of course (pressure at surface lesser 1 Pa), so, let’s turn-off the atmosphere on this moons (GH: #1676).
  • Updated AstroCalc tools (GH: #1679)
  • Updated GUI of AstroCalc tools
  • Updated Almagest SC: use almstars catalogues to improve sky culture (GH: #1647)
  • Updated al-Sufi skyculture
  • Updated native names of planets
  • Updated Help window: added special local hotkeys info (GH: #1679)
  • Updated Stellarium User Guide
  • Updated handling the designations of stars
  • Updated Bayer and Flamsteed designations of stars
  • Updated Angle Measure plugin: change mouse cursor in angle measure mode (GH: #1698, #1707)
  • Updated the installer for Windows: added links to Stellarium User Guide and ANGLE mode of Stellarium on the desktop
  • Updated scripts
  • Updated default catalogs in the plug-ins
  • Updated texture for M51
  • Updated list of locations
  • Updated Oculars plugin (GH: #1633)
  • Updated Satellites plugin: added description for China’s space station and updated default TLE catalog
  • Updated proper names of stars
  • Updated Russian translations of skycultures description (GH: #1645)
  • Updated support the double stars data: added ability to use multiple designations for double stars
  • Updated support the double stars data: revised all designations of double stars
  • Updated support the double stars data: uses parameters for double stars according to latest WDS data
  • Updated AstroCalc/Phenomena tool: Section “Sun, planets and moons” renamed into “Sun, planets and moons of observer location” (GH: #1563)
  • Updated ArchaeoLines plugin: replace angle DoubleSpinBoxes by AngleSpinBoxes (supersedes GH: #1447)
  • Updated core: added QTextEdit StelProperty connections (GH: #1573)
  • Updated core: added property connector code for AngleSpinBox (GH: #1573)
  • Updated core: added code for AngleSpinBox to make sure cursor position does not change while mouse-wheeling an angle (GH: #1573)
  • Removed the resetting tracking the objects in Oculars plugin (GH: #1680)
  • Removed support the config option AngleMeasure/enable_at_startup to avoid automatically enabling the Angle Measure plugin at startup of planetarium (GH: #1698)
  • Removed bad URL in Western skyculture info.ini file (GH: #1720)
  • Removed support for legacy QGLWidget rendering