Stellarium: Open source PC planetarium

One of these days I expect Google to come out with "Google Galaxy" or some similar outward-looking companion Google Earth. But we don't need to wait for Google, as there's some good free offerings out there for people wanting to stargaze from the comfort of their computer. Among them is Stellarium, an open source, multi-platform desktop planetarium. Stellarium features over 120,000 catalogued stars, our planets and their satellites, illustrated constellations and star clusters, images of nebulae, a realistic Milky Way, and "very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset." In the eye candy department it does realistic sunrise, sunset, atmosphere, and star twinkling, shooting stars eclipse simulations, and skinnable landscapes. It can also do fisheye and spheric mirror projection for real dome shows and has scripting for recording and playing back your own star shows. Wow.

Tags: astronomy, free, linux, mac, opensource, oss, osx, planetarium, stars, stellarium, windows