Stellarium is an Open Source planetarium for your computer.
You can use this program in order to see a realistic 3D sky with lots of stars on it. The stars and the constellations are rendered pretty nice but you need a Mac with a quite good graphics rendering power. One of the latest Intel Macs are recommended and Open GL is a requirement in order to run this application.
The thing that is really nice about this application is the fact that is very easy to use. In the application's interface you can find the buttons that you need in order to customize the way that it shows you the constellations or the planets.
The sky is well implemented, having around 120,000 stars from the Hipparcos catalogue. It has a realistic Milky Way, realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset.
The interface has a powerful zoom tool and the possibility to use the time control. Other features that you can find into this application are: a multilingual interface, spheric mirror projection, fisheye projection, graphical interface and extensive keyboard control and telescope control.
The visualization includes equatorial and azimuthal grids. Other visualization effects are start twinkling, shooting stars, eclipse simulation and skinnable landscapes with panorama projection.
Pluses: it is an Open Source application, it is very easy to use and the rendered objects are looking pretty good.
Drawbacks / flaws: it uses high resources, it refuses to work on some configurations.
In conclusion: if you want to have your own planetarium inside your Mac then download and install Stellarium.
version reviewed: 0.8.2
by Soft32 Editors on 03/11/2009: "Stellarium - free planetarium"
Stellarium Publisher's Description
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.
System Requirements Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, a 3D Card with support for OpenGL.
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