
Stellarium 0.19 - rbanffy
http://stellarium.org/release/2019/03/24/stellarium-0.19.0.html
======
MegaDeKay
Those interested in open source software for astronomy might also be
interested in KStars [0]. It is a very capable piece of software and, despite
what the K might lead you to believe (that it would only run on KDE on top of
Linux), it runs on Windows/OSX/Linux.

"KStars ... provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from
any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100
million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and
thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites. For students and
teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena
that happen over long timescales... For the amateur astronomer, it provides an
observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field
of view of equipment and display them... Included with KStars is Ekos
astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control
all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers,
filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online
and offline astrometry solver, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and
capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence
manager."

[0] [https://edu.kde.org/kstars](https://edu.kde.org/kstars)

~~~
ziari
KStars/Ekos is fantastic, especially the astrometry.net integration [1] for
offline plate solving.

[1] [https://indilib.org/about/ekos/alignment-
module.html](https://indilib.org/about/ekos/alignment-module.html)

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adityapurwa
I remembered when I was in junior high school, I used to play with this
software and also Celestia. I even created my own sky culture just out of
curiosity and because I love looking up at stars at night. It feels beautiful
that we can change the time, travel back and noticed that its the same stars
people had been seeing since ancient times.

Celestia also helped me understand how alone and isolated is our planet. I
would move the focus to mars, then sun, then nearby stars, then my personal
favorite Alcyone, then out of the galaxy. It showed me how vast the universe
is.

Stellarium helped me see the stars from earth. Celestia helped me see the
earth from the stars.

Amazing software that make my childhood feels wonderful.

Thank You!

~~~
Raphmedia
I'm curious, what makes Alcyone your favorite?

~~~
adityapurwa
I think its because I remembered reading about Alcyone being a star that our
solar system orbits. It was called the great sun I think?

Also if you opened Stellarium and looked at the Pleiades where Alcyone
resides, you could see blue-ish formation and it looks beautiful for me.

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Sharlin
Stellarium is awesome, but the devs should probably accept that their software
has been quite mature for a long time now and either release a 1.0.0 or change
their numbering scheme.

Edit: Whence the downvotes? It’s a 20 year old program. I know many OS devs
have a certain aversion of making the jump to 1.0, but semver is a useful
concept, and versioning that looks like semver, but in practice is not, is not
the best way to communicate the maturity of your software to potential users.

~~~
divan
Came to the comments to write a similar comment. I've used Stellarium ~10
years ago, and it's been awesome even then.

Seeing v0.19 version feels misleading and discouraging new users to try it out
of curiosity.

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StavrosK
Stellarium is fantastic, I use it for the little night photography I do and
love it.

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andrepd
Related (free of charge but not open-source):
[http://spaceengine.org](http://spaceengine.org)

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hughes
This is a great open-source project to try contributing to. The maintainers
are very responsive and open new features as well as bugfixes.

I had a tiny improvement in this release:
[https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/pull/612](https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/pull/612)

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8bitsrule
Stellarium is one of the great under-sung feats of open-source. And it's great
for learning.

A person may have learned to identify many objects in the sky. The planetarium
feature (motion at various rates) makes it much easier (and faster) to
comprehend how it all fits together at various times of the day and of the
year. Fascinating.

For example, turn on the line of the ecliptic and watch its motion around 'due
south' as the day goes by. (Wild at this time of year.) Or tell the program to
'track' a constellation (e.g. Orion) and then fast-forward by days to see how
it rises/falls wrt the horizon because of the Earth's tilt. Or watch (and try
to figure out) why the Moon moves _all over the sky_.

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jplayer01
> Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. 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.

~~~
rashkov
This made me realize that it might be a fun idea to get a projector and point
it at my ceiling, could use this to explore the stars with Stellarium.

~~~
jplayer01
This is actually one of the fun little things I like to do with my VR headset.
Just lie down in the middle of my room and look at stars (there's a similar
program for VR).

~~~
nicthesailor
What program do you use for VR?

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dang
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17906113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17906113)

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tyfon
I just tried this software out a bit and it looks great.

In relation, does anyone have good telescope/camera recommendations? I've been
looking for something relatively cheap, that is less than €5000, that can take
good photos and be used with the naked eye?

I am looking at celestrons and sky-watchers but I'm a complete noob here when
it comes to judging optic qualities.

~~~
jobigoud
I'm not an expert myself, never graduated past my small refractor telescope
but I think an important question is to know if you are more interested in the
Solar System or the Deep Sky.

~~~
Fwirt
True. Mostly has to do with focal ratio. Big f-ratio scopes are better for
planetary observations, where small f-ratio scopes are better for wide-angle
views. Generally, Cassegrains fall into the first camp and Newtonians into the
second. Refractors are somewhere in the middle.

Regardless, more aperture is always better. :)

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theophrastus
Trusty old XEphem[0] is still with us, ("Free download"). It has that charming
old Xlib dependency but packs a lot of surprising options to compute and
display planetary motions etc.

[0]
[http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/](http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/)

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rbanffy
For a second, I confused it with Celestia and was thrilled it'd have a new
version.

~~~
buserror
Why the downvotes to that post, people? Most who use stellarium have played
with celestia, and vice versa, I've also personally always associated the both
of them together.

Celestia was THE play tool I used to play with my new screens/graphic cards
for a very, very long time -- not a silly game.

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jobigoud
I use Stellarium to check where Venus is in broad daylight and look for it in
my binoculars (if I see that it's away enough from the Sun). I love looking at
the crescent of Venus in daylight.

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mshockwave
Stellarium is my childhood memory! I didn't know it's open-sourced until now.
And now I can contribute to it :-)

~~~
rimliu
Talking about memories: anyone remembers Skyglobe for DOS?

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bibyte
This looks awesome. I can't believe I am just discovering it (looks like it
has been around for a long time).

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ngcc_hk
It is a surprise it is open sourced and is not v19.0. Used it from time to
time for ... 10 years. Sorry.

