Astronomy Software
Microsoft Windows (PC)

Aladin Desktop is the main application of the Aladin Sky Atlas suite. This application allows the user to visualize and manipulate digitized astronomical images or full surveys, superimpose entries from astronomical catalogues or databases, and interactively access related data and information from the Simbad database, the VizieR service and other archives for all known astronomical objects in the field.
Aladin Desktop is a widely-used java tool capable of addressing challenges such as locating data of interest, accessing and exploring distributed datasets, visualizing multi-wavelength data. Compliance with existing or emerging VO standards, interconnection with other visualisation or analysis tools, ability to easily compare heterogeneous data are key topics allowing Aladin to be a powerful data exploration and integration tool as well as a science enabler. Aladin Desktop is based on Java techonology. It requires a classical installation on the user machine.

C2A (Computer Aided Astronomy) is a Planetarium software that allows you to build detailed views of stellar fields. An important objective of this software is to take into account the main catalogues available to professional and amateur astronomers in order to prepare observations on small fields as well as astrometry and photometry works. C2A is also an easy to use general purpose Planetarium software with many functions.
C2A is able to display the following catalogues: SAO, GCVS, WDS, Gliese and Hipparcos (all four provided with the standard program distribution), Guide Star, Tycho-2, USNO-SA1.0, USNO-A2.0, USNO-B1.0, UCAC1, UCAC2, UCAC3, UCAC4, NOMAD, PPMXL, CMC15 and URAT1. For photometry purpose, C2A natively integrates the Loneos catalogue . C2A is able to access directly over the Internet the catalogues ArasBeAM, Exoplanet Transit Database and IAU Meteor Showers. Finally, C2A integrates an asterism catalogue and it can display artificial satellite positions using orbital elements in the TLE format.

The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.

DeepSkyStacker is an application for astrophotographers that simplifies all the pre-processing steps of deep sky pictures.
- Registering
- Stacking
- Simple post-stacking processes to quickly view the final result
- Saving the resulting image to a TIFF or FITS file (16 or 32 bit)
After a shooting night you give all your pictures (light frames, darks frames, offset/bias frames, flat frames) to DeepSkyStacker and you go to bed. The next morning (or is it afternoon?) you can see the result and start post-processing.

Gaia Sky is a real-time, 3D, astronomy visualisation software that runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy in the Gaia group of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universität Heidelberg).

- Free and open source - Gaia Sky is open and free, and will stay this way. Contribute to the development and translations.
- From Gaia to the cosmos - Move freely through the cosmos or explore the Solar System in a seamless manner!
- Gaia - Observe Gaia in its orbit and discover its movement in the sky and its attitude.
- Virtual Reality - The whole Universe in VR!
- 6D exploration - Represents star positions but also proper motions and radial velocities, if available.
- Planetary surfaces - Explore surfaces with elevation maps (using tessellation, if available).
- 3D-ready - With 6 stereoscopic modes: Anaglyphic (red-cyan), VR headset, 3DTV (H and V), cross-eye and parallel view.
- 360 mode - With sperhical (equirectangular), cylindrical and Hammer projections.
- Planetarium projection mode - Ready to produce videos for full dome systems.
- Use your data - Bundles Gaia DR2, NBG, SDSS and MWSC. Supports VOTable, FITS, CSV and others (STIL).
- Real-time filters - Filter any dataset by distance, magnitude, galactic, ecliptic, equatorial coordinates, and more.
- SAMP aware - Implements SAMP commands to interoperate with SAMP-ready software such as Topcat and Aladin.
- Navigate the galaxy - Support for controllers and gamepads makes navigating the Galaxy a piece of cake.
- Record and play your camera paths - Ready to record and play camera paths off-the-shelf.
- Scriptable and extensible - Use Python to script and extend the capabilities of the Gaia Sky.
- Internationalised - Translated so far to English, German, Spanish, French, Catalan and Slovenian.

Explore the world in 3D. The application lets you zoom in any part of the world.
Explore the Earth, but also the sky, the Moon and Mars.

KStars is free, open source, cross-platform Astronomy Software. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites.
For students and teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales, the KStars Astrocalculator to predict conjunctions, and many common astronomical calculations.
For the amateur astronomer, it provides an observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them. Find out interesting objects in the "What's up Tonight" tool, plot altitude vs. time graphs for any object, print high-quality sky charts, and gain access to lots of information and resources to help you explore the universe! 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, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager.

It enables your computer to function as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world.
Experience narrated guided tours from astronomers and educators featuring interesting places in the sky.

World Wind allows any user to zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth, leveraging high resolution LandSat imagery and SRTM elevation data to experience Earth in visually rich 3D, just as if they were really there.
Particular focus was put into the ease of usability so people of all ages can enjoy World Wind. All one needs to control World Wind is a two button mouse. Additional guides and features can be accessed though a simplified menu. Navigation is automated with single clicks of a mouse as well as the ability to type in any location and automatically zoom into it.

Fed up with space games that insult your intelligence and violate every law of physics? Orbiter is a simulator that gives you an idea what space flight really feels like - today and in the not so distant future.

This program enables you to draw sky charts, making use of the data in 16 catalogs of stars and nebulae. In addition the position of planets, asteroids and comets are shown.
The purpose of this program is to prepare different sky maps for a particular observation. A large number of parameters help you to choose specifically or automatically which catalogs to use, the colour and the dimension of stars and nebulae, the representation of planets, the display of labels and coordinate grids, the superposition of pictures, the condition of visibility and more. All these features make this celestial atlas more complete than a conventional planetarium.

SkyTools is software designed from the ground up for observing. It includes a complete set of software tools for observation planning, charting, and logging. The new SkyTools Professional Edition adds unique and powerful tools for imaging and an unprecedented database of stars to 20th magnitude over the entire sky.

Stellarium is a 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:
- Sky:
  • default catalogue of over 600,000 stars
  • extra catalogues with more than 177 million stars
  • default catalogue of over 80,000 deep-sky objects
  • extra catalogue with more than 1 million deep-sky objects
  • asterisms and illustrations of the constellations
  • constellations for 20+ different cultures
  • images of nebulae (full Messier catalogue)
  • 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

- Visualisation:
  • equatorial and azimuthal grids
  • star twinkling
  • shooting stars
  • tails of comets
  • iridium flares simulation
  • eclipse simulation
  • supernovae and novae simulation
  • 3D sceneries
  • skinnable landscapes, now with spheric panorama projection

- Customizability:
  • plugin system adding artifical 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...

Virtual Moon Atlas (VMA) is a software for Moon observation and survey. Let you visualize the real Moon aspect at every time. Also help to study any lunar formations using feature database and pictures library.
It makes possible to visualize the appearance of the Moon for any date and time, to pilot telescopes with computerized mounts on the Moon and to study in detail the lunar formations using a database of over a million entries and a strong image library of nearly 9,000 photos

The Virtual Planets Atlas (VPA) offers data as it becomes available for telluric planets and Solar System satellites. This includes Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and its four Galilean satellites (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). The data is made available using data from International Astronomical Union (IAU) nomenclatures, NASA and ESA planetary missions, United States Geological Survey (USGS) & JPL mapping works and from amateur astronomers.

WinStars 3 is a planetarium for almost any platform. Employing 3D technology to display our solar system in a realistic manner, users may tour the planets, follow a space probe on its long voyage, or observe a celestial event from a distant world, as well as receiving the latest astrophysical news from a live feed.

Features:
- Gaia DR2 catalogue with more than 1.7 billion stars (internet connection needed).
- More than 30,000 galaxies, nebulae, star clusters (OpenNGC + EDD Catalogues).
- A direction of observation which is easily controlled by a mouse and in real time.
- A precise representation of the observable sky from a point on the Earth’s surface on a given date.
- A 3D interface to give more realism to celestial objects.
- Virtual textures to display high resolution surface details of planets.
- Travel throughout the solar system, to over 200,000 stars, the edge of our galaxy and beyond.
- Follows the latest scientific news by downloading additional modules.
- A calculation of notable astronomical phenomena visible from an observation point on the earth.
- Detailed information about each object.
- A calculation of positions of the principal satellites of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, of comets and of asteroids.
- An outline of the celestial equator, the ecliptic, and a grid of azimuthal and equatorial coordinates.
- A 3D outline of the planetary orbits.
- Сontrol a large range of telescopes.
- Internet resources are also available:
updated comets and asteroids’ elements, querying of DSS (Digitized Sky Survey) servers to obtain a photograph of that portion of the sky being displayed by the program, a notice of the visibility of artificial satellites, etc.
- Automatic updates.
- Available languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Russian