A free open source desktop planetarium for your Mac

Stellarium for Mac

Stellarium for Mac

  -  366.55 MB  -  Open Source
  • Latest Version

    Stellarium 24.2 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-24.2-qt6-macOS.zip

  • MD5 Checksum

    29571975d74c4c23c86bd7cfcbe3a6b7

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...
Note: Requires 64-bit processor.

Also Available: Download Stellarium for Windows

  • Stellarium 24.2 Screenshots

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

    Stellarium 24.2 Screenshot 1
  • Stellarium 24.2 Screenshot 2
  • Stellarium 24.2 Screenshot 3
  • Stellarium 24.2 Screenshot 4

What's new in this version:

Added:
- ability to show an approximate limiting magnitude of devices in Oculars plug-in
- support Twilight Factor and Relative Brightness for binoculars in Oculars plug-in
- support Adler Index for binoculars in Oculars plug-in
- support Bishop Index for binoculars in Oculars plug-in
- more actions for Exoplanets plug-in
- set of navigational stars from Nevil Maskelyne’s “The British Mariner’s Guide” published in 1764
- discovery circumstances for newly discovered comets
- partial solar eclipse opening angle
- ability to follow CMAKE_INSTALL_MANDIR variable
- ability to add/subtract great years via hotkeys
- support for localization for solar eclipses maps
- export of an equirectangular raster eclipse map
- missing discovery circumstances for some comets
- note for unmarked entries for Sources in Satellites plugin

Fixed:
- eclipse artifacts
- building Scenery3D plugin with Qt 6.7
- Russian translation of Belarusian SC description
- image path in German translation of Greek (Farnese) SC
- references in Romanian SC
- Galician translation of Xhosa SC description
- Italian translation of Anutan SC description
- calculation of twilight factor (or dusk index) for binoculars in Oculars plug-in
- hiding/restoring of star name display in Navigational Stars plugin
- morphological description of DSO
- output for CLI option –list-landscapes in Windows
- solar radius
- CLI output in Windows
- generator of KML
- properties for some periodic comets
- remembering the sorting rules between updates in AstroCalc/Positions tool
- failure to parse too small numbers with from_chars

Changed:
- Changed AstroCalc/Eclipses tool: check number of penumbra limits in terms of rise-set line
- Changed AstroCalc/Eclipses tool: rewrite generation of shadow limits
- Changed AstroCalc/Eclipses tool: rewrite AstroCalcDialog::getMaximumEclipseAtRiseSet
- Changed AstroCalc/Eclipses tool: rewrite AstroCalcDialog::getRiseSetLineCoordinates
- Changed core/AstroCalc: Move solar eclipse computations out from Planet.cpp
- Changed core/AstroCalc: Move some solar eclipse computations from AstroCalcDialog
- Changed core/AstroCalc: do not show earthshine during annular or high-percentage partial eclipses
- Changed core/AstroCalc: refine max eclipse at rise/set curve
- Changed core: force redraw of NomenclatureItems if needed
- Changed core: rename sky culture change signal for better consistency
- Changed core: switch off IAU moon numbers from screen labels
- Changed Satellites plug-in: compactification of GUI
- Changed Satellites plug-in: improve explanatory tooltip
- Changed Remote Control plug-in: add and fix missing functions and features
- Changed scaling limits, special for real planetariums
- Changed GUI: minor clarification
- Changed Satellites plugin: expanding photometry and RCS data for satellites
- Changed Scenery3D plugin: rename variable for debugging of the shaders
- Changed visual style: enable table borders by default in sky cultures
- Changed visual style: use single lines between table cells in sky cultures
- Updated Vanuatu (Netwar) sky culture: clarified the license with author
- Updated Anutan sky culture: fix formatting
- Updated Chinese sky culture: fix formatting
- Updated Tibetian sky culture: rename an image to match the name in the links
- Updated default catalog of exoplanets
- Updated default list of locations
- Updated default catalog of pulsars
- Updated discovery circumstances data for minor planets
- Updated discovery circumstances data for comets
- Updated photometry of satellites
- Updated planetary nomenclature
- Updated group for RPM
- Removed extraneous borders in tables in About dialogs of plugins
- Removed config option for an AppImage