A free open source desktop planetarium for your Mac

Stellarium for Mac

Stellarium for Mac

  -  524.92 MB  -  Open Source
  • Latest Version

    Stellarium 26.1 LATEST

  • Review by

    Marian Marinescu

  • Operating System

    macOS 11.0 Big Sur or later

  • User Rating

    Click to vote
  • Author / Product

    Fabien Chereau / External Link

  • Filename

    Stellarium-26.1-qt6-macOS.zip

  • MD5 Checksum

    56ab1bc6806cfdbe122a745458992e76

Stellarium for Mac is a free open source 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 of Stellarium for macOS:

Sky
  • Default catalog of over 600,000 stars
  • Extra catalogs with more than 210 million stars
  • Asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
  • Constellations for twelve different cultures
  • Images of nebulae (full Messier catalog)
  • Realistic Milky Way
  • Very realistic atmosphere, sunrise and sunset
  • The planets and their satellites
Interface
  • A powerful zoom
  • Time control
  • Multilingual interface
  • Fisheye projection for planetarium domes
  • Spheric mirror projection for your own low-cost dome
  • All new graphical interface and extensive keyboard control
  • Telescope control
Visualization
  • Equatorial and azimuthal grids
  • Star twinkling
  • Shooting stars
  • Eclipse simulation
  • Supernovae simulation
  • Skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection
Customizability
  • Plugin system adding artificial satellites, ocular simulation, telescope configuration and more
  • Ability to add new solar system objects from online resources...
  • Add your own deep sky objects, landscapes, constellation images, scripts...
How to Use

Open the downloaded DMG file and install the app

Launch Stellarium from the Applications folder

Set your location using the location window

Use mouse or trackpad to pan and zoom the sky view

Click objects to get detailed information

Toggle viewing options in the side panel

Use the time controls to simulate sky movement

Search celestial objects using the search bar

Customize settings in the configuration menu

System Requirements
  • macOS 10.15 Catalina or later
  • 2 GHz dual-core processor or higher
  • 2 GB RAM minimum (4 GB recommended)
  • OpenGL 3.3 compatible graphics card
  • 500 MB of available disk space
PROS
  • Realistic night sky simulation
  • Extensive object database
  • Easy-to-use interface
  • Customizable viewing settings
  • Free and open-source software
CONS
  • Can be resource intensive
  • Occasional UI lag on older Macs
  • Limited telescope control support
  • Lacks deep astrophotography tools
Note: Requires 64-bit processor.

Also Available: Download Stellarium for Windows

Why is this app published on FileHorse? (More info)
  • Stellarium 26.1 Screenshots

    The images below have been resized. Click on them to view the screenshots in full size.

    Stellarium 26.1 Screenshot 1
  • Stellarium 26.1 Screenshot 2
  • Stellarium 26.1 Screenshot 3
  • Stellarium 26.1 Screenshot 4

What's new in this version:

Added:
- support to non-standard regions in list of sky cultures
- Chinese (Xianglin Star Chart) and Manchu sky cultures
- ability to change the density of grid lines
- ability to disabling show an OAG angular limits
- FOV-dependent Moon enlargement
- Time Navigator plugin
- “Planetary Events” feature for Time Navigator plugin
- missing full stops in narration
- Mongolian and Hieroglyph fallback fonts (Windows)
- improvements for ASCOM telescopes
- support of new time step: Metonic cycle
- examples for select the planetary features in scripts
- missing flag for InfoBox
- link to MPC’s list of bright minor planets in opposition available for 2026 into Solar System Editor plugin
- vcs-browser URL into metadata

Fixed:
- path to territory.geojson
- translation regions in GUI
- visual style for new feature in the Sky Cultures tab
- observing list window displaying incorrect list name after delete
- crash when trying to reach View dialog
- comet tail extinction
- deleting items from observing lists
- saving description in observing lists
- compilation on Windows
- compilation on macOS Tahoe
- orbital parameter of HIP91919 and parallax of HIP 28360
- crash: avoid NaN result
- scaling of meteor shower icon
- scaling of other object pointers
- size of meteor shower, satellite, DSO pointers
- wrong defaults in Extinction
- typo in asterism
- spelling error
- an assertion
- compilation for Qt5
- select single constellation in some languages
- sync for InfoBox’s flags
- detecting dependencies for Text-To-Speech feature
- docs
- scripting API docs
- typos in sky cultures
- compilation with Qt 6.10+: QXlsx switched to master to avoid compiling issue when Qt 6.10+ is used
- Spelling in Roman calendar in Calendars plugin
- year of copyright and version of application
- crash at exit from Stellarium
- DOI for citation

Changed:
- Changed core And GUI: Expansion of skycultures through spatial and temporal extent
- Changed core: Change how zoom limits for map in sce are handled
- Changed core: Make object searches return StelObjectP
- Changed core: Rewrite SearchDialog logic
- Changed core: Strip away some HTML decoration from infostring and narration
- Changed core: Use translation setting for Zodiac/Lunar Station infostring labels
- Changed core: Refinements for TextToSpeech output
- Changed core: Increase minimum number of facets of the planetary mesh
- Changed core: Allow Vec4 in RemoteControl API
- Changed core: Re-enable high graphics mode for OpenBSD and NetBSD operating systems
- Changed core: Added improvements for support ARM64 architecture on Windows
- Changed core: Re-enable high graphics mode for OpenBSD and NetBSD
- Changed core: Take care of application font change
- Changed logger: fix for Haiku OS name detection
- Changed logger: improved hardware detection for OpenBSD
- Changed logger: cosmetic fixes for Solar System Editor plugin
- Changed scripting engine: Also remove labels, skyImages and screenImages when clearing the scene in a script
- Changed behavior of AstroCalc/Phenomena tool: do not disable selection of the objects when list of phenomena is empty (the mode “Last selected object” is enabled)
- Changed OnlineQueries plugin: Updated ASE URL
- Updated albedo texture of the Moon
- Updated planetary nomenclature
- Updated default list of comets and minor planets
- Updated translations
- Updated default catalog of exoplanets
- Updated list of contributors
- Updated discovery circumstances for comets and minor planets
- Updated photometry data for artificial satellites
- Updated Babylonian (MUL.APIN) sky culture
- Updated Norse (Edda) sky culture
- Updated Help dialog: added Scenery3D movement keys
- Updated DSO catalog to v3.23

Removed:
- a broken duplicate of page_surveys
- ridiculously huge minimumSize from culturesListWidget
- duplicate sky culture layout from Survey tab
- code for autoselect of the discrete graphics cards