Features

Realistic Sky

Realistic Sky

  • Default catalogue of over 600,000 stars with precise positions and magnitudes.
  • Accurate planetary positions with proper motion correction for long-term precision.
  • Atmospheric refraction and extinction models for realistic brightness and location.
  • Adjustable magnitude limits and catalog filters for custom realism.
Powerful Search

Powerful Search

Quickly find objects, planets, or deep-sky entries with the integrated search tool.

Constellation Art

Constellation Art

Showcase cultural constellation art and asterisms from different traditions.

Screenshots

Free, open source, in active development.

Written in C++ (Qt), Stellarium is free and open-sourced under the GPL-2.0 license. Please feel free to contribute to it by opening an issue, sending a feature request or a bug report on GitHub.

Font Awesome fontawesome.com

Stellarium has been translated into more than 85 languages by translators from all over the world. You can improve the translation or add your new language freely (powered by Transifex).

Font Awesome fontawesome.com

Acknowledgement

If the Stellarium planetarium was helpful for your research work, please cite the following paper in your acknowledgment:

This research has made use of the Stellarium planetarium

Zotti, G., Hoffmann, S. M., Wolf, A., Chéreau, F., & Chéreau, G. (2021). The Simulated Sky: Stellarium for Cultural Astronomy Research. Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 6(2), 221–258. DOI: 10.1558/jsa.17822

Or you may download the BibTeX file of the paper to create another citation format: DOI:10.1558/jsa.17822

Please note that the software has several releases since these fundamentals were published:

  • Stellarium contributors (2025). Stellarium v25.3 Astronomy Software. URL https://stellarium.org/. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17226780
  • Zotti, G., Wolf, A. (2022). Stellarium: Finally at Version 1.0! And Beyond. Journal of Skyscape Archaeology, 8(2), 332–334. DOI: 10.1558/jsa.25608

Many individuals and organizations are supporting the development of Stellarium by donations, and the most generous financial contributors (with donations of $250 or more) are

BairesDev, Daniel, Laurence Holt, Astronomie-Werkstatt "Sterne ohne Grenzen", Bryan, Dotcom-Monitor, John Bellora, Marla Pinaire, Jeff Moe (Spacecruft), SSSTwitter, Peter Reigber, Incognito, Michel Payette, Vernon Hermsen, Triplebyte, Satish Mallesh, Vlad Magdalin, Philippe Renoux, Fito Martin.

Join the Community

Get support, contribute, and follow the project.