A free open source desktop planetarium for your Mac

Stellarium for Mac

Stellarium for Mac

  -  513.61 MB  -  Open Source
  • Latest Version

    Stellarium 25.4 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-25.4-qt6-macOS.zip

  • MD5 Checksum

    caf281e16d0e115556a25e2982a6df65

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 25.4 Screenshots

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

    Stellarium 25.4 Screenshot 1
  • Stellarium 25.4 Screenshot 2
  • Stellarium 25.4 Screenshot 3
  • Stellarium 25.4 Screenshot 4

What's new in this version:

Added:
- new sky culture: Balinese
- new sky culture: Indian
- new sky culture: Norse
- new sky culture: Chinese
- initial support of narration
- discovery circumstances for newly discovered comets
- missing timezone
- Latin zodiac in Greek
- Latin zodiac in Greek
- Greek zodiac in Greek
- Greek zodiac in Greek
- report failures to load textures obtained from network too
- constellation descriptions to Modern sky culture
- VS2026 multi-config section and fix VS2022 statement in BUILDING.md
- more logging categories
- missing context in Modern sky culture constellation names
- ability to inhibit screensaver in fullscreen via CLI
- object type support for custom object
- obj type in search result, indicating SIMBAD result with fetched object types
- all native names to name search
- the star “Celestial Pig’s Eye” in Chinese sky culture
- Visual Studio 2022 build instructions
- ability to see colored labels for satellites in both modes
- polar distance info into InfoMap data
- extinction effect into drawing of satellites
- new set of navigational stars
- ability to use polar distance instead of declination in equatorial coordinates
- Nova Centauri 2025
- support for translating separated Constellations section

Fixed:
- crash when ENABLE_SPEECH is not defined
- typos
- structure of many sky cultures
- observe magnitude limit
- discovery circumstances for minor planets
- some debug messages with paths
- hardware detection in linux/aarch64
- hardware detection in OpenBSD
- typo in Babylonian
- checking updates
- build with Qt6.10
- IPA for Russian Siberian sky culture
- GUI issue in Solar System Editor plugin
- altitude representation in decimal degrees in AstroCalc/Phenomena tool
- deleted lines during creation of a constellation end up in the output in Sky Culture Maker plugin
- Observability Analysis plugin crash
- start with empty observing list
- documentation
- getting screenshot HiDPI scaling on Wayland
- bookmarks for minor planets orbital elements
- indication satellite in penumbra
- helplabel font in bottom bar
- a use after free
- loading localization in some specific cases
- translations issue
- loading star catalogs
- setting SkyculturePartition colors
- reading the setting for enabling abbreviations of constellations
- missing config option
- tooltip
- the positioning of the star “Auxiliary Road “ in Chinese Chenzhuo sky culture
- description of few scripts
- classification issue in Sky Culture Maker plugin
- issue in Sky Culture Maker plugin: Drawn constellations are not reset after “Export and Exit”
- issue in Sky Culture Maker plugin: Stop drawing line key
- issue in Sky Culture Maker plugin: Not all sky culture description input fields that are marked required are actually checked
- issue in Sky Culture Maker plugin: No formal checks for ‘Constellations’ input field in sky culture description
- some issues in the Chinese Chenzhuo sky culture
- Sardinian sky culture: Allow elongation-dependent name for Venus
- abbreviations in Indian sky culture

Changed:
- Changed core: Allow negative hour angles
- Changed core: Compute correct longitude position even if skyculture partition is not shown
- Changed core: Recreate viewport effect on screen scaling change
- Changed core: Take changes in magnitude due to proper motion when getting vmag with extinction
- Changed core: Retrieve all cultural names on search
- Changed core: Extend global zone in lv0-2 catalogs to 200,000 years due to GH #4501
- Changed core: Need to normalize binary stars’ cartesian position to fix wrong parallax effect for binary stars
- Changed core: Minor dynamic resolution changes
- Changed core: Don’t forget to run markdownToHTML on an SC description section
- Changed core: Scale Custom Object pointer with the screen
- Changed core: Scale nomenclature pointer with the screen
- Changed core: Scale star pointer with the screen
- Changed core: Properly scale SolarSystem pointer with the screen
- Changed core: Properly scale meteor shower icon on the screen
- Changed core: Scale meteor shower, satellite, DSO pointers with the screen
- Changed visual type of monthly graph in AstroCalc tool
- Changed GUI: Don’t force button sizes in ScriptConsole
- Changed GUI: Make combobox dropdown actually drop down
- Changed NLS: Simplify ‘pronounce’ .po entries of Chinese sky cultures
- Changed Calendars plugin: Allow exporting displayed list
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Remove “test only” warning and enable translation signal
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Tell what fields are incomplete on export error
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Use artIntensity from ConstellationMgr
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Tweak the Close dialog text
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Use better button labels in the Close dialog
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Fix UX issues with aborting and hiding dialogs + missing translations
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Fix Thickness of constellation lines in SCM is not tied to Stellarium’s settings
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Move constellation descriptions to the Constellations dialog
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Option to merge constellation lines into polylines
- Changed Sky Culture Maker plugin: Don’t exit on “Export and Exit” when export failed
- Changed Oculars plugin: Try a drop shadow to increase GUI panel clarity

Updated:
- DSO catalog
- CalcMySky to v0.4.0
- Babylonian sky cultures
- Chinese
- BAS_Messier_Tour.ssc script
- Maori sky culture
- Modern
- Arabic
- description of Arabic
- Chinese sky cultures: complete the entries on planets
- IAU-star names in Modern
- the list of contributors
- photometry data of satellites
- default list of satellites
- the default list of locations
- the default catalog of exoplanets
- default catalog of pulsars
- names of DSO
- orbital elements for minor bodies of Solar system
- discovery circumstances for comets and minor planets
- translations
- Stellarium User Guide
- template for Stellarium User Guide
- planetary nomenclature data

- Restored mistakenly altered Sun texture
- Removed copies of images from root directory
- Removed extraneous brackets in IPA of Balinese sky culture
- Removed outdated core: Unuse StelSkyDrawer::getBortleScaleIndex in ZL
- Removed the kludge in Constellation