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.
The light polution simulation (composite image)
Stars, nebulae, the equatorial grid
Zoom in on Saturn and its moons
Fisheye view of the sky, with constellation art displayed
features
Sky
■ Default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
■ Extra catalogues with more than 210 million stars
■ Asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
■ Constellations for 15 different cultures
■ Images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
■ Realistic Milky Way
■ Very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
■ The planets and their satellites
Interface
■ A powerful zoom
■ Time control
■ Multilingual interface
■ Fisheye projection for planetarium domes
■ Spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
■ All new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
■ Telescope control
Visualisation
■ Equatorial and azimuthal grids
■ Star twinkling
■ Shooting stars
■ Eclipse simulation
■ Supernovae simulation
■ Skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
Customizability
■ Plugin system adding artifical satellites, ocular simulation, telescope configuration and more
■ Ability to add new solar system objects from online resources...
■ Add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...
