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| Stellarium | |
|---|---|
 | |
 Stellarium 24.3 running onWindows | |
| Original author | Fabien Chéreau |
| Developers | Alexander Wolf Georg Zotti Marcos Cardinot Guillaume Chéreau Bogdan Marinov Timothy Reaves Florian Schaukowitsch |
| Initial release | 2001 |
| Stable release | |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C++ (Qt) |
| Operating system | Linux,Windows,macOS |
| Platform | PC,Mobile |
| Size | 345 MB (Linuxtarball) 261 MB (Windows 32-bit installer) 398 MB (Windows 64-bit installer) 243 MB (macOS package) |
| Type | Educational software |
| License | GNU GPLv2[2] |
| Website | stellarium |
Stellarium is afree and open-sourceplanetarium, licensed under the terms of theGNU General Public License version 2 or any later version, available forLinux,Windows, andmacOS. A port of Stellarium called Stellarium Mobile is available forAndroid andiOS. These have a limited functionality, lacking some features of the desktop version. All versions useOpenGL to render a realistic projection of thenight sky inreal time.[citation needed]
Stellarium was featured onSourceForge in May 2006 asProject of the Month.[3]
In 2006, Stellarium 0.7.1 won a gold award in the Education category of theLes Trophées du Librefree software competition.[4]
A modified version of Stellarium has been used by theMeerKAT project as a virtual sky display showing where the antennae of theradio telescope are pointed.[5]
In December 2011, Stellarium was added as one of the "featured applications" in theUbuntu Software Center.[6]
The fisheye and spherical mirror distortion features allow Stellarium to be projected onto domes. Spherical mirror distortion is used in projection systems that use a digitalvideo projector and a first surface convexspherical mirror to project images onto adome. Such systems are generally cheaper than traditionalplanetarium projectors andfish-eye lens projectors and for that reason are used in budget and home planetarium setups where projection quality is less important.[citation needed]
Various companies which build and sell digital planetarium systems use Stellarium, such ase-Planetarium.[7][non-primary source needed]
Digitalis Education Solutions, which helped develop Stellarium, created a fork calledNightshade which was specifically tailored to planetarium use.[8][9][non-primary source needed]
VirGO is a Stellarium plugin, a visual browser for theEuropean Southern Observatory (ESO) Science Archive Facility which allows astronomers to browse professional astronomical data. It is no longer supported or maintained; the last version was 1.4.5, dated January 15, 2010.[10][non-primary source needed]
Stellarium Mobile is afork of Stellarium, developed by some of the Stellarium team members. It currently targets mobile devices runningSymbian,Maemo,Android, andiOS. Some of the mobile optimisations have been integrated into the mainline Stellarium product.[11][non-primary source needed][dead link]
Eleanor Catton, theNew Zealand author who wrote the2013 Booker Prize recipient novelThe Luminaries, stated she used star charts from Stellarium andSky & Telescope while writing the novel to help reconstruct the sky within the timeframe the novel is set in.[12]
