Simulation of the night sky using a graphical Linux desktop planetarium for KDE

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: March 7, 2006]

KStars is a graphical Linux desktop planetarium for KDE. KStars lets you explore the night sky from the comfort of your computer chair. It depicts an accurate simulation of the night sky, including stars, constellations, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies, all planets, the Sun, the Moon, comets and asteroids. If you are big fan of Starwars epic then this software is perfect for you. You can see the sky as it appears from any location on Earth, on any date. An excellent program, IMPO.

In addition, KStars allows you to configure and control astronomical instruments such as telescopes and focusers via the INDI protocol. indiserver is a server that sits between the KStars user interface and the low-level hardware drivers.

It support The Equatorial Coordinate System and The Horizontal Coordinate System (It is use to specify sky positions, astronomers have developed several coordinate systems).

Press F1 to read The KStars Handbook. It has all info you need to know about this software. If you are aware of more open source software for same purpose then let me know (Check out all of our posts on Linux Desktop)