KStars

KStars
Screenshot of KStars showing the night sky from New Delhi
Developer(s) KDE developers
Stable release 2.3.0 / December 2014
Operating system Unix-like, Windows, OS X
Platform KDE
Type Educational software
License GNU General Public License
Website http://edu.kde.org/kstars/

KStars is a planetarium program using the KDE Platform. It can be used on most Unix-like computer operating systems, as well as on the Microsoft Windows platform using 'KDE for Windows'.[1] It provides an accurate graphical representation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars (with additional addons), 13,000 deep sky objects, constellations from different cultures, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets and asteroids. It has features to appeal to users of all levels, from informative hypertext articles about astronomy, to robust control of telescopes and CCD cameras, and logging of observations of specific objects.

Included with KStars is Ekos astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers, filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline astrometry solver, auto-focus and auto-guiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager.

KStars has been packaged by many Linux/BSD distributions, including Red Hat Linux, openSUSE, Mandriva Linux, and Debian GNU/Linux. Some distributions package KStars as a separate application, some just provide a kdeedu package, which includes KStars. KStars is distributed with the KDE Software Compilation as part of the kdeedu "Edutainment" module.

KStars participated in Google Summer of Code in 2008,[2] 2009,[3] 2010,[4] 2011[5] and 2012.[6] It has also participated in the first run of ESA's Summer of Code in Space in 2011.[7]

It has been identified as one of the three best "Linux stargazing apps" in a Linux.com review.[8]

The latest version of KStars is 2.2.0, released with KDE Applications 14.12. Released under the GNU General Public License, KStars is free software.

See also

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to KStars.

References

  1. ↑ "The KDE Education Project - KStars". Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  2. ↑ List of 2008's successful participants, Google Summer of Code, KML file
  3. ↑ Google Summer of Code 2009 Accepted Projects, accessed 2011-04-23
  4. ↑ Google Summer of Code 2010 Accepted Projects, accessed 2011-04-23
  5. ↑ "GSoC 2011 - Accepted Projects". Google, Inc. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  6. ↑ "GSoC 2012 - Accepted Projects". Google, Inc. Retrieved 23 June 2012.
  7. ↑ Selected mentoring organizations, ESA Summer of Code in Space 2011. Accessed 2011-07-29.
  8. ↑ http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/475400-explore-the-universe-the-three-best-linux-stargazing-apps