Sky Simulator

**ceti** · February 14th, 2005

Being a amateur astronomer, I wonder if there is a sky simulator for Linux, other than Kstars. Kstars is good, but it is part of the KDE Education package and I don't want KDE applications on my desktop.
Any suggestions?
Thanks

**kleeman** · February 15th, 2005

I like xephem. The interface is a bit dated but the scope is large....

http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/

**ceti** · February 15th, 2005

thank you very much, but I couldn't install it, even after reading the INSTALL file.
Can you tell me what this mean? ---> make MOTIF=../../libXm/linux86

ceti

**piedamaro** · February 15th, 2005

You can try sterllarium, I installed it few hours ago on my girlfriend's computer, and it rocks! deb packages here:
http://3demi.net/debian/debs/

You'll find also xephem packages as well as other apps, namely panorama tools.
You may want to take a look at celestia too.

p.s. the command you showed is needed to compile applications from source, and it's done from command line.

**kleeman** · February 15th, 2005

Cool!!!!!

**ceti** · February 16th, 2005

thank you, Kleeman & Piedamaro.
Stellarium & Xephem are great, I installed them from .deb packages and everything is ok.
just a question, if you please: how do I increase font sizes in Xephem? They are too small...

ceti

**kleeman** · February 16th, 2005

There is a font section in the Preferences menu but it is a bit clunky. I managed to change some of the fonts after mucking around a bit......

**ceti** · February 16th, 2005

thanks again, kleeman
I'll try it later.

cheers

**charlieg** · July 15th, 2005

I second the recommendation for Stellarium. Also there's Celestia although that's more space exploration than astronomy.

**Robocoastie** · December 11th, 2005

i third xephem. I also like xplns but I get a "font error" when I try to run it in Ubuntu. It's always worked in other distros without a hitch. oh well.