Stellarium: open source planetarium for your computer
Thursday, February 28th, 2008
Because Microsoft is going to launch a planetarium product soon, I heard about an open source package called Stellarium. It’s a cross platform piece of software that shows you the sky and a lets you navigate through it. It’s pretty cool, especially if you have a Mac and kids who expect you to know the names of stars in the sky.
During the lunar eclipse last week, we were outside looking at the stars. I was trying to navigate using a star chart in a book and saw a red star that I couldn’t quite place. After 2 minutes on Stellarium, I realized that we had been looking at Mars, a fact that would have sent Malcolm through the roof had I know it at the time. I can’t wait for the next clear night!
