Stellarium is free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope. Stellarium is also used in planetariums.
Features:
Sky
- Over 120000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue with name and info
- Planets and major satellites in real time
- Asterisms of the 88 constellations with their names
- Mythological figures of the 88 constellations
- Images of more than 70 nebulas (Orion, M31 etc..).
- Photo-realistic Milky Way
Landscape & visualization
- Skinnable landscape (ground, fog, mapping of fisheye pictures)
- Ultra fast realistic atmosphere rendering (sunsets, sunrises etc...)
- Automatic eye adaptation to sky luminance using physiologic model
- Grids in equatorial and azimuthal coordinates
- Equator and ecliptic coordinates lines
Navigation & rendering
- Smooth real time intuitive navigation
- Powerful zoom to see planets and nebulae like through a telescope
- Equatorial and altazimuthal mount mode
- Standard perspective and wide angle (fisheye) projection modes
- Time control (real time and accelerated time modes)
- Graphical menu for simple use
- Clickable stars, planets and nebulas, with information
- Windowed and fullscreen modes
- Full dome (180°) projection mode for planetariums
- Text user interface for planetariums
