You can install planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Features:

Sky:

* over 120,000 stars from the Hipparcos catalogue with info
* asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
* images of nebulae
* realistic Milky Way
* very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
* the planets and their satellites

Interface:

* a powerful zoom
* time control
* multilingual interface
* scripting to record and play your own shows
* fisheye projection for planetarium domes
* spheric mirror projection for your own dome
* graphical interface and extensive keyboard control

Visualisation:

* equatorial and azimuthal grids
* star twinkling
* shooting stars
* eclipse simulation
* skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

Customisability:

* add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts…

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!