Stellarium 0.8.1 review

Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with ope

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Fabien Ch?reau

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Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time with openGL. Stellarium is available for Linux/Unix, MacOSX and Windows. With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.

Here are some key features of "Stellarium":
Sky

Over 120000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue with name and infos for the brightest ones.
Planets and major satellites in real time (position computation now accurate enough for eclipse or transit simulation).
Drawing of the 88 constellations with their names.
Mythological figures of the 88 constellations.
Textured displaying of more than 70 nebulas (Orion, M31 etc..).
Photo-realistic Milky Way.
Star twinkling.
Shooting Stars.

Landscape & visualization

Skinable 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.
Powerfull zoom to see planet and nebula like in a telescope.
Equatorial and altazimutal mount mode.
Standard perspective and wide angle (fisheye) projections modes (e.g for planetarium dome).
Time control (real time and accelered time modes).
Graphical menu for simple utilisation.
Clikable stars, planets and nebulas with informations.
Windowed and fullscreen modes.
Full dome (180°) projection mode for planetariums.
Text user interface for planetariums.

Requirements:
Linux/Unix, Windows 95/98/2000/NT/XP or MacOSX.
A 3D Card with a support for OpenGL. At least a Voodoo3 or a TNT2 is recommended for smooth animation.
A dark room for realistic rendering : details like the Milky Way or star twinkling can't be seen in a bright room.

What's New in This Release:
radial texture for planetary rings
telescope control using external telescope server programs
minimum_fps patch by nuisance78
image flipping
Many bugs fixes, thanks to bug reporters on sf.net!