free planetarium for your computer

[Delezynski]

For all you night sky watching people (and anyone making a night passage) I just found a new (to me) free program. It's called Stellarium and I got it as a “Portable App”
at: Stellarium Portable | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives

But you can get computer resident copy at: Stellarium

“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.”

I just started playing with it and it sure does look good!
I got the “Portable App” version as I put it on my Eee (7 inch screen) PC for use outside. At under 2 pounds it's easy to hold up the PC and compare the screen to the actual sky!

Enjoy!


Greg

[knottybuoyz]

Downloaded and tried it. Cool. I prefer Google Sky. If you've got Google Earth change the view to "Switch to Sky" and you'll get all the starts, constellations, planets, galaxy's etc. Not sure if this works in plain Google Earth, I have Google Earth Pro. Plenty of info in there with links to lots of reliable scientific sites such as NASA etc.

The other program I've used is Starry Nite (or night).

Starry Night Store

[anotherT34C]

If you're feeling adventurous, you can try celestia;

Celestia: Home

This one doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. See the Earth rise from the moon, or Jupiter rise from Europa. Way cool.