KStars
![[Screenshot]](kstars-welcome-large.png)
Description
KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes upto 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids.
Features
- Catalogs:
- Default catalog consisting of stars to magnitude 8
- Extra catalogs consisting of 100 million stars to magnitude 16
- Downloadable catalogs including Messier Images, Abell Planetary Nebulae
- Corrections for precession, nutation and atmospheric refraction
- Tools for retrieval of data from Online Databases
- Scriptable actions using D-Bus
- Integration with INDI provides support for a wide range of instruments
- Features for Educators and Students:
- Adjustable simulation speed in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales
- KStars Astrocalculator to access some of the internal calculations of KStars, and also to predict conjunctions etc
- Astroinfo project to help facilitate learning with the aid of KStars
- Internet links for further information / pictures of objects
- Features for Amateur Astronomers:
- Observing List tool to plan observations
- FOV Editor helps calculate field of view of equipment and display them
- Obtain AAVSO light curves for variable stars
- What's up tonight tool
- Altitude vs Time tool
- Sky Calendar tool
Resources
- Git repository — hosts the latest code of KStars
- The kstars-devel mailing list — for developers of KStars and enthusiasts to discuss
- INDI — protocol to operate astronomical instruments
Latest News
| Date | Headline |
|---|---|
| October 17, 2010 | OpenGL support! |
| July 5th, 2010 | What's brewing in the future releases? |
| July 4th, 2010 | KStars at Akademy 2010 |
| February 9th, 2010 | KStars is now an awesome observation planner! |
| January 29th, 2009 | KStars-1.5 released |
| March 12th, 2007 | Updated Daylight Savings Time rules |
| March 13th, 2006 | KStars-1.2 released |
| March 6th, 2006 | Comets and Asteroids Updated |
| March 2th, 2006 | KStars Community Forums |
| June 29th, 2005 | Introducing: SVN snapshot releases |
Credits
Original Author: Jason Harris
Current Maintainer: Alexey Khudyakov
INDI: Jasem Mutlaq
For our full credits list, see our contributors' page.
Join Us!
Interested in helping develop KStars? We need programmers, of course, but even if you don't code, we can still use your help. If you are an astronomy enthusiast, there is our AstroInfo project. We could also use help writing documentation and translating. Even bug reports and feature requests are a big help, so keep them coming!
Some pointers to get started:
- Join our mailing list
- Some junior and not-so-junior jobs here!
- Details on building KDE trunk on the KDE techbase
Webmasters: Jasem Mutlaq, Akarsh Simha
Last update: 2011-08-18
