Stellarium: Exploring the stars
Stellarium is software planetarium that is free of cost. The GNU general public license decides the terms under which Stellarium is registered. It is available for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. In order to render a realistic sky in real time, it uses OpenGL. Stellarium makes the viewing of astronomical objects possible which may be impossible to see with small telescopes, binoculars or naked eye.
Fabien Chereau, the French Programmer developed Stellarium. This project was launched in summer of the year 2001. Other prominent developers responsible for the networks were Johan Meuris, Robert Spearman and Johannes Gajdosik.
Features: The early features of Stellarium include :
• More than 600000 stars from the Tycho 2 Catalogue and Hipparcos catalogue. • An extra catalogue of over 210 million stars • All the major moons and the planets of solar system • Realistic eclipses, sunrises and sunsets. • Atmosphere, fogs and panorama landscapes. • Wide angle or fish eye and standard perspective modes
0.9.0 Version features: The new features that are included in the 0.9.0 Version of Stellarium are given below :
Sky features: The sky features of Stellarium are mentioned below:
• Planets along with their satellites • A realistic view of milky way • Default catalogue consisting more than 600000 stars • Illustrations and asterisms of the constellations • Another extra catalogue describing over 210 million stars • Realistic view of sunrise, sunsets and atmosphere • Messier catalogue consisting images of the nebulae
Interface: The user interface features of new version of Stellarium are as follows :
• Multilingual interface for easy communication with the user • Time control • Excellent view with the fisheye projections for the planetarium domes • Control of the telescope • A powerful zoom • Spheric mirror projection for your own dome • The user can play their own shows • Graphical interface along with an extensive keyboard control • User can script the records
Visualization :
• Eclipse stimulation • Skinnable landscapes • Equatorial grids • Twinkling of stars • Azimuthal grids • Spheric panorama projection
Customisability: The user can customize Stellarium in various ways. The can add their own landscapes, deep sky objects, scripts and constellation images.
The new sky cultures of Stellarium version 0.9.0 include Inuit, Navajo and Lakota. It also includes the Inuit constellation art by Johan Meuris. It also consists of new projections. They are Lamberts equal area, orthographic and cylinder.
The version 0.9.0 is more accurate regarding the positions of the planets. Addition of comet objects has also become possible with the new orbital calculation class. The window has been resized to full screen toggle mode. The user can fly to planets by pressing the ctrl G button after selecting a planet. The landscape locations are set according to the landscape.
The places of interest are also included in the new version of Stellarium. The city positions on the earth have been improved. The mission sites of Mar and Moon are also improved. New landscape such as Garching that is located near Munich has also been added.Other satellite programs, Stellarium, features of stellarium,
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