While we are in our childhood days,we wondered by seeing the night sky filled with twinkling stars. When we were become adult we don’t have enough time to watch and enjoy the night sky. Through this post we are calling your golden old memories back. Let’s together watch the night sky with the support of the technology and let us examine and find the stars in the night sky. Stellarium is a planetarium software that shows a realistic 3D simulation of the night sky on your computer screen. It includes a default catalog with more than 600,000 stars, images of nebulae, a realistic Milky Way, as well as planets and their satellites. You can download additional catalogs. Here is a screenshot of the program.
You can click on each object to view the name, distance and other details and also zoom in for a closer look. You can easily understand the location of stars on your area using the program,as it can show the sky based on your current geographical location or any other place on earth. It also allows you to simulate movements by going back and forth in time at different speeds.some other interesting features include very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset simulations, star twinkling effects and shooting stars, skinnable landscapes, night vision mode, etc.
Stellarium is available to download for free and has a file size of 56MB. The Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. It displays stars, constellations, planets, nebulae and others things like ground, landscape, atmosphere, etc. You can visit the Stellarium project page on Source forge and get a free copy from the site.
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Did you enjoyed the night sky. Don’t forget to show and describe the stars and planets to your children and help them to find and analyze them. So they can prepare charts, notes and datasheets about the stars and planets that they are noticed on the night sky. This will surely improve their observation and analysis skills.
