Stellarium software allows an average computer user to locate stars
and planets that can be seen with naked eyes, binoculars
or a small
telescope. Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders
realistic skies in real time with openGL. It is available for
Linux/Unix, Windows and MacOSX.The program display takes up
all of the computer screen, in other words, all Windows
application toolbars and the Windows Desktop disappear, and the real time picture of
the skies corresponding to the time setting of the computer is shown.
Appearance of the sky is very realistic, for night as well as for day, showing
what is can be visible during the day and where the planets and stars
are when they are blocked by the Sun’s glare.The mouse can be
used to grab and rotate the sky relative to the viewer, just as in
Adobe Acrobat and other applications, in order to look at all the
points of the compass as well as the straight up the zenith-nadir line.
Visual effects include glittering nebulae, twinkling stars, selection
box and frames which help to visualize the extent of celestial
formations.To make it truly real-time, the geographical
setting is made using one of the options in the control bar,
unobtrusively shown as a semitransparent overlay located on the bottom
left of the screen. Other options provide for adding art images and/or
line drawings of constellations as faint overlays, helping to visualize
and locate stars in constellations such as Virgo, Orion, Libra, etc.Other
useful options are the grid and realistic horizon line controls, the
search feature, which can find any object by scientific or common name,
the zoom and light filtering,
location bookmarking, object tracking,
prediction and more.One of very useful features is the
place and time control, which can be used to slow down, go to a
specific time, or speed up time. The speeding up allows a user to
understand the relative motion of the sky and the objects at a user’s
location. The location control provides hundreds of pre-selected
locations throughout the world, sparing a user from having to input
geographic coordinates, as is common to other planetarium software
products.The program is fascinating and enjoyable, however
it requires a Windows user to run updated Windows XP, have a quality
monitor, plenty of video memory and, due to very active use of video
drivers, a well-functioning CPU fan.