KStars is a freely licensed

planetarium A planetarium ( planetariums or ''planetaria'') is a Theater (structure), theatre built primarily for presenting educational entertainment, educational and entertaining shows about astronomy and the night sky, or for training in celestial navi ...

program using the KDE Platform. It is available for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

, BSD,

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

, and Microsoft Windows. A light version of KStars is available for Android devices. It provides an accurate graphical representation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million

star A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...

s (with additional addons), 13,000

deep sky object A deep-sky object (DSO) is any astronomical object that is not an individual star or Solar System object (such as Sun, Moon, planet, comet, etc.). The classification is used for the most part by amateur astronomers to denote visually observed fa ...

constellation A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline, typically representing an animal, mythological subject, or inanimate object. The origins of the earliest constellation ...

s from different cultures, all 8 planets, the Sun and

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System and the largest and most massive relative to its parent planet, with a diameter about one-quarter that of Earth (comparable to the width of ...

, and thousands of

comet A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena ...

asteroid An asteroid is a minor planet of the inner Solar System. Sizes and shapes of asteroids vary significantly, ranging from 1-meter rocks to a dwarf planet almost 1000 km in diameter; they are rocky, metallic or icy bodies with no atmosphere. ...

s, satellites, and

supernova A supernova is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. It has the plural form supernovae or supernovas, and is abbreviated SN or SNe. This transient astronomical event occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or whe ...

e. It has features to appeal to users of all levels, from informative hypertext articles about astronomy, to robust control of

telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to obse ...

s and CCD cameras, and logging of observations of specific objects. KStars supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales. For astronomical calculations, Astrocalculator can be used to predict conjunctions, lunar eclipses, and perform many common astronomical calculations. The following tools are included: * Observation planner * Sky calendar tool * Script Builder * Solar System * Jupiter Moons * Flags: Custom flags superimposed on the sky map. * FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them. * Altitude vs. Time tool to plot altitude vs. time graphs for any object. * Hierarchical Progress Surveys (HiPS) overlay. * High quality print outs for sky charts. * Ekos is an astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all

INDI Indi may refer to: *Mag-indi language * Division of Indi, an electoral division in the Australian House of Representatives *Indi, Karnataka, a town in the state of Karnataka, India *Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface, a distributed control sy ...

devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs,

DSLR A digital single-lens reflex camera (digital SLR or DSLR) is a digital camera that combines the optics and the mechanisms of a single-lens reflex camera with a digital imaging sensor. The reflex design scheme is the primary difference between a ...

s, focusers, filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline

astrometry Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. Hist ...

solver, auto-focus and auto-guiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager. KStars has been packaged by many Linux/BSD distributions, including

Red Hat Linux Red Hat Linux was a widely used commercial open-source Linux distribution created by Red Hat until its discontinuation in 2004. Early releases of Red Hat Linux were called Red Hat Commercial Linux. Red Hat published the first non-beta releas ...

, OpenSUSE, Arch Linux, and

Debian Debian (), also known as Debian GNU/Linux, is a Linux distribution composed of free and open-source software, developed by the community-supported Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock on August 16, 1993. The first version of De ...

. Some distributions package KStars as a separate application, some just provide a kdeedu package, which includes KStars. KStars is distributed with the

KDE Software Compilation The KDE Software Compilation (KDE SC) was an umbrella term for the desktop environment plus a range of included applications produced by KDE. From its 1.0 release in July 1998 until the release of version 4.4 in February 2010, the Software Comp ...

as part of the kdeedu "Edutainment" module. KStars participated in Google Summer of Code in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 2012, 2015 and 2016. It has also participated in the first run of ESA's Summer of Code in Space in 2011. It has been identified as one of the three best "Linux stargazing apps" in a Linux.com review.

References

External links

*
MPC Elements for Comets and Minor Planets in KStars
*Download tp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable source codean
Windows
an
Mac
versions {{KDE Astronomy software Free and open-source software Free astronomy software Free educational software KDE Education Project KDE software Linux software Planetarium software for Linux Science education software Science software Software that uses Qt

See also

References

External links