WinStars : Cross-Platform 3D Planetarium with Rich Graphics

WinStars is a cross-platform planetarium software for Windows, Linux, Mac OS and Android. It offers three dimensional view of the solar system, stars, asteroids, comets, and other celestial bodies. It displays accurate locations of various objects as they appear on any day and any time. You can see the arrangement of various planets, the sun and other objects as it was on any custom date and time.

The installation of WinStars is a little bit annoying. During the installation it downloads some files from the WinStars servers, but then downloads more files when it is launched for the first time – all the while making you wait with WinStars banner showing on your computer screen. Why not download all the files at the same time?

WinStars

But all this downloading is worth the wait. The rich graphics of this planetarium application are breathtaking. It opens up in the in the planetarium mode where you can see the sky from a point on the Earth’s surface. You can observe how various celestial objects appear in the sky. But you can also switch to the navigation mode which throws your observation point in the space and you can see the Earth as it is visible from the space along with the sun and other planets.

All the various options are always available through different icons on the screen – you can toggle the names of constellations, stars, planets, the planet paths and other things. You can set the time and date on which you want to view the sky. The following screenshot is from the Christmas day of 1648 AD – the shiny object is the sun and the Earth is appearing dark as it is observed from a point facing the sun.

WinStars

If you come across a really impressive arrangement of the planets and the stars, then you can send it to your printer or save the screenshot to your hard drive. You can also manually search of any object in the sky. WinStars comes with a default catalog of 2.5 million stars making it very realistic planetarium.

You can download WinStars from https://winstars.net/en/.