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 Stellarium Team has released version 23.3.

The major changes of this version:

  • New plugin: Missing Stars
  • Allow semitransparent landscapes
  • Added discovery circumstances for Solar system bodies
  • Improve orbit drawing for minor bodies
  • Show named impact features as ellipses
  • Major changes in Navigational Stars plugin
  • Observing List fixes
  • Unambiguous comet names

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 ability to define directory for observing lists (GH: #3165)
  • Added new plugin - "Missing Stars" (GH: #3399, #2998, #1907, #361, #116)
  • Added scriptable method and shortcut for toggle visibility the markers of selected objects
  • Added support smooth orbit lines (GH: #3371)
  • Added support drawing of orbits on open KeplerOrbits (GH: #3359)
  • Added patch to use qt.conf on windows via QtCreator (GH: #3345)
  • Added scalar versions of sRGB-linear conversions
  • Added option to add or exclude moon orbits for planets/selected objects (GH: #3348)
  • Added another option and StelApp method to allow storing config items immediately (GH: #3348)
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Soviet aviation
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Soviet/Russian manned space programs
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Vixen Starbook
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Argo Navis
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Orion Intelliscope
  • Added new set of navigational stars: Sky Commander
  • Added "is-waning" to planet info map
  • Added Skywatcher SynScan HC and Pro App alignment stars for Navigational Stars plugin (GH: #3327)
  • Added Meade Autostar 494/497 HC alignment stars for Navigational Stars plugin
  • Added set of navigational stars from Apollo space program for Navigational Stars plugin
  • Added show current location of object for AstroCalc/Ephemeris tool (GH: #3289, #2937)
  • Added missing timezone (GH: #3316)
  • Added support transparency for landscapes (GH: #3293, #3214)
  • Added discovery circumstances for comet P/2023 M1
  • Added CLI option for logfile name
  • Fixed blending DSO hints (GH: #3302)
  • Fixed type for Interstellar objects in Solar System Editor plugin
  • Fixed bad performance in Mac M1 (GH: #2947)
  • Fixed crash in Telescope Control plugin for Qt6-based packages (GH: #2874, #2821)
  • Fixed background color for artwork (GH: #3299)
  • Fixed handling Stellarium' scripts on Macs
  • Fixed mistake in DSO catalog
  • Fixed a slow reaction with touchpad on Macs (GH: #2778)
  • Fixed missing translations
  • Fixed various typos (GH: #3411)
  • Fixed clarification on Spout in SUG (GH: #2922)
  • Fixed hiding splash when starting stellarium from a script (GH: #3407)
  • Fixed a logfile warning (GH: #3324)
  • Fixed location update with landscape in RemoteSync plugin (GH: #3274)
  • Fixed observing list import/export (GH: #3207, #3206)
  • Fixed error when downloading stars (GH: #3395)
  • Fixed link to supplemental TLE (default lists)
  • Fixed list of MSVC++ versions
  • Fixed moving to a NomenclatureItem location (GH: #3355)
  • Fixed the botched logic of storing details for the orbit drawing (GH: #1842, #3348)
  • Fixed overflow on bad implementations of tanh() (GH: #3351)
  • Fixed discrepancy between SUG and an Oculars tooltip (GH: #3346)
  • Fixed crash of Nav. Stars plugin (GH: #3341)
  • Fixed bug: avoid dereferencing null pointer
  • Fixed bug: prevent artifacts in limb darkening
  • Fixed computation of signed phase angle of a planet (GH: #3306)
  • Fixed the name of a uniform in a location query
  • Fixed FPS: restore minimizing fps when idle
  • Fixed crash Oculars plugin: Lens can potentially be a null pointer, so must not be dereferenced without a check (GH: #3322)
  • Fixed OpenSSL issue for Qt5-based packages for Windows (GH: #3321, #3326)
  • Fixed a DSO name confusion mentioned at Transifex
  • Fixed object search with HIP numbers
  • Fixed behavior of DitheringMode with QVariant in Qt5 (GH: #3307, #3304)
  • Fixed Qt5 build without PCH
  • Fixed restoration for default list of TLE source in Satellites plugin
  • Fixed handling Unicode in Telescope Control plugin (GH: #2934, #3301)
  • Fixed connection to a renamed signal in Telescope Control plugin
  • Fixed connections to renamed signals in RemoteSync plugin: this restores excluding features from synchronisation (GH: #3303)
  • Changed core: a tiny improvement for sorting data in Search Tool
  • Changed core: Reduce dumping cities for unknown timezones
  • Changed core: avoid recomputation of RTS at every frame (GH: #3275)
  • Changed core: preserve texture binding when rendering text (GH: #3356)
  • Changed core: improve text rendering quality (GH: #3353)
  • Changed core: show comets a bit less restrictively
  • Changed core: use optional "immediate save" for Nomenclature detail settings (GH: #3342)
  • Changed core: draw crater type NomenclatureItems (craters, Lunar maria, satellite features which AFAICS are always craters) as ellipse (GH: #3342)
  • Changed core: suppress forward scattering peak in the sky pseudo-reflection behind landscape
  • Changed core: reduce code duplication in xyYToRGB shader and updating the code
  • Changed core: enable stencil buffer in the main OpenGL surface format
  • Changed core: always use texture-based text rendering in StelPainter
  • Changed core: Turn dithering into a global post-processing effect (GH: #3335)
  • Changed core: Use GLSL 3.30 whenever OpenGL >= 3.3 is in use
  • Changed core: Move OpenGL 3.3 Core glfuncs() getter to StelOpenGL
  • Changed core: Explicitly choose texture unit in spherical mirror distorter
  • Changed core: Move InitFailure from AtmosphereShowMySky to the base class
  • Changed core: updated code for vector maths
  • Changed logger: cosmetic fixes for better reading the data
  • Changed NavStars plugin: simplifications
  • Changed RemoteSync plugin: Allow suppressing debug messages
  • Changed RemoteSync plugin: Allow finetuning of debug output
  • Changed RemoteSync plugin: Add useful diagnostic in case of problem
  • Changed Scenery3D plugin: changed logging type
  • Changed requirements: Qt 5.12 is minimal version now to building
  • Changes in Windows installer: using better compression algorithm
  • Updated SUG: Clarify that our J2000.0 coordinates include aberration. (GH: #3309)
  • Updated instructions for building planetarium from source code
  • Updated OnlineQueries plugin
  • Updated default list of satellites
  • Updated list of exoplanets
  • Updated discovery circumstances for minor planets
  • Updated comet discovery circumstances (GH: #3389)
  • Updated list of locations
  • Updated default settings for macOS bundle
  • Updated settings for doxygen (GH: #3390)
  • Updated plugins: Removed logically wrong code (unused by the fact)
  • Updated plugins: Switched to use static variables for sync visibility of stars labels
  • Updated Solar System Editor plugin
  • Updated ssystem_1000comets.ini file
  • Updated Espenak & Meeus DeltaT equation
  • Updated nomenclature data
  • Updated GUI: Disable dithering config GUI when dithering is not supported (GH: #3335)
  • Updated contact address in few sky cultures
  • Removed – fix-text option
  • Removed locales with translation progress lesser 1% per whole time
  • Removed outdated code for support the version of Qt prior 5.12
  • Removed fov options from RemoteSync plugin: is now StelMovementMgr.currentFov property (GH: #3303)