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.
Features:
Sky:
- over 120,000 stars from the Hipparcos catalogue with info
- asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
- images of nebulae
- realistic Milky Way
- very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
- the planets and their satellites
Interface:
- a powerful zoom
- time control
- multilingual interface
- scripting to record and play your own shows
- fisheye projection for planetarium domes
- spheric mirror projection for your own dome
- graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
Visualisation:
- equatorial and azimuthal grids
- star twinkling
- shooting stars
- eclipse simulation
- skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
Customisability:
- add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...