# Stellarium



## Mallorn (Jul 3, 2008)

For anyone that is interested in Astronomy this free downloadable program is a truly useful resource. Just select as near to where you live and you can see the position of everything in the sky in real time. You can also make the earth invisible to see the whole sky and even remove the atmosphere too. It always stays in real time and shows the phases of the moon and all the other planets with their moons in exact position as they would be now. The graphics are excellent too!

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.

Unfortunately as I have not currently 15 posts, I cannot add the direct link (nice one!).

So, here it is written with spaces so that I can at least post the address (obviously do not put the spaces in the address bar): w w w. stellarium. org /


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## MKG (Jul 4, 2008)

Yep - I have to agree. Stellarium is excellent and even more so because it's free! AND you can set up the sky for any date you like - very handy for Stonehenge explorers and pyramid aligners.


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## Mallorn (Jul 4, 2008)

Another feature I like is in the search box, type say Jupiter or Saturn, zoom into them, then press the progression arrow two or three times till you get the speed you want and you can watch the moons go round.

.............I'm, easily pleased!


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## gully_foyle (Jul 6, 2008)

After only spending a couple of minutes with it, I must say me like. My long time favourite has been sky chart 3, but I like the realistic rendering of this one. The controls are less intuitive, but that may be just me being used to windows drop down menus.

Anyhoo, I noticed an unusual alignment tonight and checked it out on stellarium, I thought maybe there were two stars and one planet involved, but no...


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## gully_foyle (Jul 6, 2008)

On the other hand, I just went look for NGC 5128 and while it gave me a location, I was surprised to find there was no visual cue for it. This is the largest galaxy in the southern sky, about half the apparent size of the moon. Although a bugger to spot with the best telescopes. 

It seems that Stellarium is Northern Hemisphere oriented. I hope version 1 is more comprehensive.


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## Mallorn (Jul 7, 2008)

Hi Gully, I have tried to capture screen print but it hasn't worked for me. How did you do it?


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## gully_foyle (Jul 7, 2008)

Hit your PrtSc button and paste into a word doc or powerpoint slide, then save as a picture.


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## woodsman (Jul 8, 2008)

Wow looks pretty good, I might well have to investigate this. Cheers Mallorn.


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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)

I will post a few screen shots myself now that I have sussed it.


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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)

The problem was that the screen print was capturing the dos log in box and only saving that. By pressing the return to desktop key pad button and clicking the dos box to minus, it left only the main stellarium screen to be captured so,....sorted.


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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)




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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)




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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)




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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)




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## Mallorn (Jul 9, 2008)

And last one!


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## AE35Unit (Jul 10, 2008)

That sounds a good one,can i have a version for my phone?


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