Stellarium: open source planetarium for your computer
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!
February 28th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
That thing is so awesome. My kids love to click a planet like Jupiter or Saturn, press the spacebar (to center it), zoom way in, speed up time, and then watch the colorful moons orbit the planet.
The only downside is that now when we’re out looking at the real stars and planets, we’re all thinking about going inside to look at the stupid computer.
March 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pm
laptop! They even have a night mode where all text turns red.