Stellarium (software)

---

title: "Stellarium (software)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["2001-software", "cross-platform-software", "free-astronomy-software", "free-educational-software", "free-software-programmed-in-c++", "planetarium-software-for-linux", "portable-software", "science-software-for-macos", "science-software-for-windows", "software-that-uses-qt"] description: "Open-source planetarium" topic_path: "science/astronomy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellarium_(software)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Open-source planetarium ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]

Field	Value
name	Stellarium
logo	File:Stellarium Splash.png
logo size	100px
screenshot	File:Stellarium v24.3.png
screenshot size	300px
caption	Stellarium 24.3 running on Windows
author	Fabien Chéreau
developer	Alexander Wolf
Georg Zotti
Marcos Cardinot
Guillaume Chéreau
Bogdan Marinov
Timothy Reaves
Florian Schaukowitsch
released	2001
latest release version	25.1
latest release date
programming language	C++ (Qt)
operating system	Linux, Windows, macOS
platform	PC, Mobile
size	345 MB (Linux tarball)
261 MB (Windows 32-bit installer)
398 MB (Windows 64-bit installer)
243 MB (macOS package)
genre	Educational software
license	GNU GPLv2
::

| name = Stellarium | logo = File:Stellarium Splash.png | logo size = 100px | screenshot = File:Stellarium v24.3.png | screenshot size = 300px | caption = Stellarium 24.3 running on Windows | author = Fabien Chéreau | developer = Alexander Wolf Georg Zotti Marcos Cardinot Guillaume Chéreau Bogdan Marinov Timothy Reaves Florian Schaukowitsch | released = 2001 | latest release version = 25.1 | latest release date = | programming language = C++ (Qt) | operating system = Linux, Windows, macOS | platform = PC, Mobile | size = 345 MB (Linux tarball) 261 MB (Windows 32-bit installer) 398 MB (Windows 64-bit installer) 243 MB (macOS package) | genre = Educational software | license = GNU GPLv2

Stellarium is a free and open-source planetarium, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or any later version, available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. A port of Stellarium called Stellarium Mobile is available for Android and iOS. These have a limited functionality, lacking some features of the desktop version. All versions use OpenGL to render a realistic projection of the night sky in real time.

Stellarium was featured on SourceForge in May 2006 as Project of the Month.

History

In 2006, Stellarium 0.7.1 won a gold award in the Education category of the Les Trophées du Libre free software competition.

A modified version of Stellarium has been used by the MeerKAT project as a virtual sky display showing where the antennae of the radio telescope are pointed.

In December 2011, Stellarium was added as one of the "featured applications" in the Ubuntu Software Center.

Planetarium dome projection

The fisheye and spherical mirror distortion features allow Stellarium to be projected onto domes. Spherical mirror distortion is used in projection systems that use a digital video projector and a first surface convex spherical mirror to project images onto a dome. Such systems are generally cheaper than traditional planetarium projectors and fish-eye lens projectors and for that reason are used in budget and home planetarium setups where projection quality is less important.

Various companies which build and sell digital planetarium systems use Stellarium, such as e-Planetarium.

Digitalis Education Solutions, which helped develop Stellarium, created a fork called Nightshade which was specifically tailored to planetarium use.

VirGO

VirGO is a Stellarium plugin, a visual browser for the European Southern Observatory (ESO) Science Archive Facility which allows astronomers to browse professional astronomical data. It is no longer supported or maintained; the last version was 1.4.5, dated January 15, 2010.

Stellarium Mobile

Stellarium Mobile is a fork of Stellarium, developed by some of the Stellarium team members. It currently targets mobile devices running Symbian, Maemo, Android, and iOS. Some of the mobile optimisations have been integrated into the mainline Stellarium product.

Screenshots

File:Stellarium 001.jpg|Constellation art in version 0.6.2 File:Stellarium 0.10.1 - Constellation art - English.png|Constellation art in version 0.10.1 File:Stellarium Mars.png|Mars and its moons in Stellarium 0.14 File:Stellarium Grid.png|Equatorial and Azimuthal Grids in Stellarium 0.14 File:Stellarium Night Mode.png|Screenshot of Night Mode in Stellarium 0.14

Legacy

Eleanor Catton, the New Zealand author who wrote the 2013 Booker Prize recipient novel The Luminaries, stated she used star charts from Stellarium and Sky & Telescope while writing the novel to help reconstruct the sky within the timeframe the novel is set in.

References

References

1. Wolf, Alexander. (March 23, 2025). "v25.1".
2. "~stellarium/stellarium/trunk : contents of COPYING at revision 9976".
3. (May 2006). "Project of the Month – May 2006 – Stellarium".
4. "The third Free Software Awards placed under the sign of the international". Les Trophées du Libre 2006 website.
5. "Virtual sky display in MeerKAT control room". Ska.ac.za.
6. (December 14, 2011). "Software Centre app picks for December". Developer.ubuntu.com.
7. "Stellarium Planetarium Software". E-Planetarium website.
8. "Nightshade Astronomy Simulation Software". Digitalis Education Solutions official website.
9. "Nightshade Astronomy Simulator". Nightshade official website.
10. "VirGO, The Visual Archive Browser". ESO Science Archive Facility.
11. "Stellarium Mobile". Noctua Software.
12. Tivnan, Tom. (1 August 2013). "Eleanor Catton: Interview".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::