Stellarium: looking at the sky

Stellarium is a software that allows people simulate un planetary on your own computer, is free software and is available for all major operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Allows calculate la posición of the Sun, the moon, the planets, the constellations and the stars. It also simulates the sky depending on the location and time of the observer. It also simulates astronomical phenomena, such as meteor showers and lunar and solar eclipses.

It is said that it was by looking at the sky that primitive human beings ignited their curiosity and began to marvel. It was since then and almost uninterruptedly that humanity was immersed in a dizzying race that at this point allows us to observe in real time a sporting event held on the other side of the world, to travel in a couple of hours what would have taken months. and, of course, simulate by means of complex mathematical algorithms a post-apocalyptic world where to survive you have to kill as many zombies as possible.

Although there are still many of us who continue to look up, we must sadly warn that today's skies are not as calm and clear as before. Our eyes are no longer enough and sophisticated instruments are required that are very expensive (a very simple telescope costs several hundred dollars). But for some years from France we have received Stellarium, a software (of course free) that simulates an astronomical planetarium inside our computer.
It is simply wonderful. With a simple but very attractive and intuitive interface, it allows us to locate ourselves anywhere on Earth and direct our virtual telescope to a very realistic sky, zoom in and focus on celestial bodies, search for astronomical events (ahhh ... I forgot, you can manipulate the time too ), and even get the most detailed information of everything you look at.

Some of the features of Stellarium (of the many listed on the official website) are:

Sky:

• Default catalog of about 600.000 stars
• Bonus catalogs with over 210 million stars
• Asterisms and constellation illustrations
• Constellations of twelve different cultures
• Nebula images (entire Messier catalog)
• Realistic Milky Way
• Realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
• Planets and their satellites

Interface:

• A powerful zoom
• Time control
• Multilingual interface
• Fisheye Projection for Planetarium Domes
• Spherical mirror projection system for your own low cost dome
• New graphical interface and extensive control from the keyboard
• Telescope control

Display:

• Equatorial and azimuthal grids
• Twinkling star
• Shooting Stars
• Eclipse simulation
• Supernova simulation
• Customizable landscapes, now with spherical panoramic projection

And, of course, it is quite customizable.

The current version is 0.11.3.

Craved? As well. To install Stellarium you just have to go to the software manager of your distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, and all popular distros have it in their database). It is also possible to install it directly from a terminal.

On Ubuntu, Mint and derivatives:

sudo apt-get install stellarium

On Fedora and derivatives:

sudo yum install stellarium

On Arch Linux and derivatives:

sudo pacman -S stellarium

The project page in Spanish is: http://www.stellarium.org/es/

There you will also find a complete manual to delve into its characteristics and use.

For now I say goodbye because I will start a little journey ... «Space, the final frontier ...»