Still, you can't beat free, and overall this is one of my favorite astronomy programs. Stellarium 1 is a virtual planetarium application that simulates the night sky and shows you constellations and celestial bodies. Without a suitable mouse interface for this feature, it breaks workflow for many people (although hotkeys are faster in the long run). The lack of a mouse interface to send slew commands to the telescope means you have to use the keyboard's hotkeys (CTRL-1 slews Telescope #1 to the currently selected point). It doesn't support ASCOM for total observatory integration, but it does support a number of telescopes, including CelestronSky-Watcher and Meade. The computerized telescope support is lacking. I use the angle tool, computerized telescope support, and ocular extensively. Stellarium can be extended with plugins, and comes with several out of the starting gate. What it does do, it does relatively well. It can also draw the constellations and simulate astronomical phenomena such as meteor showers or comets, and solar or lunar eclipses. ![]() There are a lot of times when you don't want to wait for Starry Night Pro and all it's features to load just to discover where a particular planet is located. Stellarium is software that calculates the positions of the Sun and Moon, planets and stars, and draws how the sky would look to an observer depending on their location and the time. It's rather short of features, compared with commercial programs like Starry Night Pro. Stellarium is short and sweet, to the point, just the way I like an application.
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