Many astronomy enthusiasts take laptops with them into the field with applications that make it easier to search for and observe celestial objects. The same programs can be used at home by preparing in advance and simply printing out the necessary materials. Or conduct observations directly from a window, from a balcony, from an adjacent area, if the current level of light pollution and the cleanliness of the atmosphere allows this. We have selected for you various applications that can be useful for both beginners and experienced amateur astronomers. Welcome to cat.

Stellarium

One of the most famous “desktop” planetarium applications. It's an open source project and the focus is on visuals. Just enter your coordinates, and the application will show you the current star map. It is possible to load additional databases with stars and flexibly configure options for displaying celestial bodies. Here you can “zoom in” and examine star clusters, nebulae, planets and star systems. There are plugins on the network that add to the application the display of artificial satellites, control of the telescope, the ability to edit the database of celestial bodies, etc.

Cartes du Ciel (Star Charts)

Another open source project. The program allows you to create a star map for further astronomical observations. You can very flexibly customize the display of galaxies, stars, planets, comets and asteroids, visibility conditions, etc. You can create your own databases of celestial objects or download ready-made ones.

WorldWide Telescope

A wonderful online project: you can download the client application or go to the web client (HTML 5), after which you will have access to data from several telescopes around the world, operating in a variety of ranges: optical, infrared, gamma, X-ray, radio. A user-friendly interface allows you to explore the incredible depths of space without leaving your chair, quickly moving to very picturesque nebulae, clusters and constellations. Also here you can study three-dimensional models of the planets of the solar system and their satellites, and view photo panoramas of Mars. Separate links present “collections” of objects studied by different telescopes: Spitzer, Chandra, Hubble, Gemini. The application allows you to create your own database of objects, even upload 3D models.

Starry Night Enthusiast

This application is more designed for fans of virtual astronomy, who just need to satisfy their craving for space with beautiful renderings on the screen. But for those who uncover their optics at night, Starry Night Enthusiast will also be useful. List of application features:


In more advanced versions (Starry Night Pro and Pro Plus) the following are available:

• a much more extensive database of celestial objects, including quasars, double stars, stars of variable magnitude, all kinds of star clusters, etc.;
• rich capabilities for determining the coordinates of celestial objects, including galaxies;
• ephemeris calculation;
• construction of Hertzsprung-Russell diagrams;
• filtering stars by distance and magnitude;
• the ability to online view images from other telescopes and many other functions.
• All versions of the application are available for Windows and Mac.

TheSkyX Student

Like SkyNight Enthusiast, this application is the youngest in the astrosoft line from this manufacturer. However, the list of its capabilities is very extensive:

Astroimage processing

What astronomy lover isn't interested in photographing the starry sky? Unfortunately, getting a beautiful image is not easy, because light pollution, air dust, thermal turbulence, optical refraction, the rotation of the Earth and the movement of celestial objects make it very difficult to obtain photographic masterpieces. And this is where special applications for processing digital photographs come to the rescue.

IRIS

One of the most powerful applications of this kind, and it’s also free. Here is a partial list of possibilities:

• built-in filters to increase sharpness, reduce thermal noise, and highlight objects in certain wavelength ranges;
• Tools for selectively adjusting colors and levels to enhance detail and highlight celestial objects;
• tools for geometric transformation of images;
• built-in algorithms for automatic processing of black and white images of the starry sky;
• built-in algorithms for positioning photographs on a star map;
• removing gradients from digital photographs;
• converter from color to black and white image;
• smoothing the pixel structure of the image;
• stitching images into panoramic images;
• photometric and astrometric analysis of images of objects in photographs;
• tools for working with images of the Sun;
• correction of distortions introduced by atmospheric turbulence;
• reverse convolution;
• adding pictures (stacking);
• creating animations;
• telescope mount control and much more.

DeepSkyStacker

This is an application for automatic pre-processing of starry sky images. Really high-quality astro photographs are usually the result of processing a series of photographs; their processing is a boring, routine process. DeepSkyStacker is capable of doing the following:

• Automatic registration of image sets.
• Automatic recognition of stars over the entire image area.
• Automatic positioning.
• Automatic creation and use of offset frames, flat field frames (flats) and dark frames (dark frames).
• Subpixel star registration, alignment and stacking.
• Automatic background calibration for each channel, etc.

Astrometry

Having photographed a section of the starry sky, it is often necessary to link it to specific objects on the map. In other words, registered objects need to be recognized. This process is also largely automated, and you do not have to do the binding manually.

IzmCCD

This application allows you to accurately determine the coordinates of objects such as planets, comets, stars, double stars, and also highlight moving objects in images. In addition, there is a built-in tool for plotting light curves of variable stars with a search function for new variables. The application is able to recognize constellations and apply their graphic image to pictures.

Audela

Quite a powerful application for processing astroimages and astrometry. Allows you to control the telescope, automatically pointing it at various celestial objects and accompanying their movement across the sky. It has advanced image capture functionality, including burst shooting, long exposure and special modes for searching for supernovae and asteroids. Rich capabilities for image processing include selecting sets, geometric editing, optimizing dark frames, highlighting the sky background, applying various filters to sharpen and remove noise, highlighting celestial bodies, building histograms, etc.

Astrocalendars and ephemeris generators

Astronomical calendar 4.0

A simple, but convenient and multifunctional program with which you can determine the exact time of occurrence of various astronomical events.

EmapWin

A program for visualizing solar eclipses within 13,000 years before Christ and 16,999 years after.

AstroCalc

An application for calculating the ephemeris of the planets of the Solar System and their satellites, with visualization of their comparative sizes, positions in the ecliptic and heliocentric position.

Applications from Alcyone

French developer Alcyone offers several applications for astronomy enthusiasts. Almost all of them can be useful: an ephemeris calculator, a lunar calculator, an astronomical table generator, an eclipse calculator, an application for determining the visibility of planets, moons and the Sun.

GraphDark

A program for constructing visual graphs of the visibility of various celestial objects.

This set of software will be enough for many astronomy lovers. Of course, everyone has their own preferences, and if you have any interesting astronomy programs in mind, please share the information with the community. And if you are into astrophotography, show your success in the comments!

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The World Telescope provides ordinary users of a computer, laptop or tablet with the opportunity to see in real time their native Earth, the Moon, the star the Sun, the planets: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, other planets and Universal content. A free download of the WorldWide Telescope from Microsoft in Russian, without leaving the site, is worth it for those who are interested in such a pastime as watching online their home planet Earth and the expanses of Space in real time.

Brief description of the telescope program from Microsoft

The virtual planetarium does not just generate several planets of the solar system, but creates a detailed model of the Universe with all the cosmic content that should be present on the star map at the current time in a given place. Not only scientists, but also ordinary fans of looking at the sky strewn with stars will benefit from downloading WorldWide Telescope in Russian for free without registration and SMS. The program is endowed with a number of extraordinary features. The world telescope online in real time allows you to view a panoramic 3-D model of the star map in almost any wavelength range (radio, infrared, light, ultraviolet, x-ray and gamma). In this model, all the planets moving around the Sun are clearly visible, there is even a detailed photo-realistic view of not only the surface of the Earth, but also the surfaces of other planets and their satellites. At the same time, it is possible to arbitrarily zoom in on individual objects for a more detailed study and contemplate cosmic bodies at given periods of time. Try downloading Microsoft WorldWide Telescope for free in Russian to be able to see online the Earth, the Moon, a star map, planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and even discover the yet undiscovered Ninth Planet.

Shared functionality with Google Earth

It is worth noting separately that WorldWide Telescope is not just a program-simulator of virtual space tours across the expanses of the Universe. Much attention is paid to the third planet of the solar system. Use the free WorldWide Telescope program in Russian to see what your native corner of the Earth looks like from Space online in sunlight, for example, at sunset. Many people like to watch planet Earth online in real time, travel to interesting places without getting up from their computer, virtually take tours and sightseeing excursions, and plot routes linked to GPS coordinates. According to user reviews and comments, Google Earth enjoys great authority in this matter. Those who liked it should definitely download the latest version of Microsoft WorldWide Telescope for free for Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and expand their astronomical knowledge.

Interface and Russian language support

After a short introduction, the WorldWide Telescope interface ceases to raise questions. High-quality localization for the Russian language allows you to quickly explore the capabilities of the program. The Russian interface is connected in the Setting menu, where in Select Your Language you need to specify Russian. Russification affected not only the menu and settings, but also help and multimedia tours. With Microsoft Visual Experience Engine technology, WWT produces amazingly high-quality panoramas, zooms and fly-bys. For the lucky owners of digital telescopes who have connected them to a computer and aimed them at the Universe, there is a “Telescope” item in the menu.

Operating modes and functionality

We offer the latest version of WorldWide Telescope in Russian for free download via a link from the website, which is an excellent tool for studying astronomy using a computer and the Internet. The program has the ability to change operating modes - to choose from five possible: sky, Earth, planets, panoramas and Solar system. The background contains high-resolution images of the starry sky obtained using the best large radio and optical space and terrestrial telescopes. United into a single panorama, photographs recreate the starry sky, along which galaxies, nebulae, stars, comets, the Sun, planets and their satellites move. The 3D model of planet Earth can be viewed in the following modes: from the air, on the street, at night and in a hybrid format. You can also see high-quality 3-D models of the Moon, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Panorama mode provides the user with various panoramic views of the Moon and Mars, captured in high resolution by Apollo astronauts and autonomous rovers, respectively. The last mode allows you to see the objects of our galaxy both from the inside and from the outside, moving away and going beyond the Milky Way. It is worth paying attention to the following advantages of WorldWide Telescope:

• the telescope online provides data on the explored part of the Galaxy and the Universe,
• information in all ranges, from radio waves to X-rays and gamma rays,
• three-dimensional volumetric stereo panoramas (anaglyph red-blue 3D glasses are required for viewing),
• modeling of celestial phenomena both currently and for a given time,
• conducting virtual tours of the Universe,
• connection of additionally downloadable tours of virtual flights into space.

Data sources, requirements, web client and working in planetariums

The highest resolution of the WorldWide Telescope star map allows it to be projected onto the dome up to six meters without the use of expensive equipment in the planetarium. Larger planetariums will require designing a multi-projector configuration. The Moscow Planetarium has an ongoing project based on the WorldWide Telescope and the Kinect control system. If it’s not easy to get to the nearest planetarium, try downloading the WorldWide telescope for free from Microsoft in Russian and organizing a great spectacle on your computer for yourself, your family and friends. contains 3D, graphical data and accompanying information obtained from major observatories, planetariums, the US Geological Survey, Roscosmos, earth-based and space-based telescopes. The most famous is the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which captured a lot of video and photo materials in unprecedented high resolution.

Of course, you can buy a starry sky projector, a children's telescope, a serious Celestron AstroMaster telescope or a Synta Sky-Watcher, but it is much easier to use an online computer telescope from Microsoft. The program works correctly on any operating system of the Windows family, but not lower than Windows XP SP3 or SP2. To run WorldWide Telescope, the system must have and installed. For users of devices with other operating systems (Android, iOS, Mac OS X, Linux, OS X and Java), reduced capabilities are available through the web client. Such a cross-platform browser client, based on technology or HTML 5, will become a replacement with limited functionality in a situation where it is not possible to download the WorldWide telescope for Windows 10, 8.1, 7, Vista, XP for free on a personal computer, laptop or netbook. Competing free software: Stellarium, Celestia, KStars, RedShift and Space Engine. Earth Alerts and Google Earth have similar functionality.

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope in Russian free download

Free programs download for free

Now you are on the page “WorldWide Telescope program - look at planet Earth and Space online in real time” of the site, where everyone has the opportunity to legally download free programs for a computer with Microsoft Windows. This page was created/substantially updated on 07/15/2016. Thank you for visiting the programs to study section.

Part one: planetariums.

Nowadays, it’s rare to surprise anyone with planetarium programs or space simulators, which many users use. Nevertheless, such a review will be useful for both novice astronomy lovers and experienced ones who are already accustomed to their favorite programs. The thing is that everything is changeable in our world, and there is no limit to perfection. So many programs a few years ago, being crude or insufficiently functional, are now quite functional and have begun to satisfy the wishes of users. They arose following the example of popular games “folk assemblies”. Those. programs that initially require many plugins or add-ons can already be downloaded in a ready-made, quite digestible form. Which greatly simplifies their installation and use. And this, in turn, turns from the torment of layouts and settings into a pleasure of use.
I’ll warn you right away that I won’t consider all the programs, since there are probably already more than 3 dozen of them. In this review, I will try to focus only on the most popular and truly useful applications. I won’t rank and sort them; unfortunately, there are no universal programs. Very often, one function is present in only one single program. That’s why you have to keep five planetariums and a couple of simulators. But which ones and how many are a matter of taste and the tasks of the user himself. I hope this review will help you make your choice.
So, let me begin.
The simplest and, in the opinion of many, reliable as a Kalashnikov assault rifle, is StarCalc(author A. Zavalishin).
Indeed, it has many advantages:
Easy to manage, absolutely free, in Russian initially, does not require mandatory installation on disk. Turned it on and it works. What else is needed for the first acquaintance with the sky, or simple control of the telescope? Support for many catalogs, including USNO.
I just recommend installing not the original, but a ready-made assembly with all the plugins.

Prepared by A.Angelsky January-February 2013

Programs for astronomers:

Stellarium 0.12.0 - virtual planetarium.We bring to your attention a new version of the Stellarium program, but this is only a beta version, i.e., not the final product.

Compatibility:

Download with (DepositFiles):

Stellarium 0.11.4 - virtual planetarium.

What can you see? More than 120,000 stars; planets of the entire solar system and their main moons; asterisms and artistic images of constellations; full ; realistic Milky Way; panoramic landscapes, fog, atmosphere and realistic sunsets, sunrises and eclipses.

Possibilities: telescope control; time management; possibility of choosing projections; equatorial and azimuthal grids; the ability to select a landscape or turn it off; visualization of atmospheric refraction effects; visualization of flashes of bright historical supernovae.

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, 7 (for 32 and 64 bit systems); Mac OS.

Download from (DepositFiles/Letibit):

Stellarium 0.11.4 win32 / Stellarium 0.11.4 win32

Stellarium 0.11.4 win64 / Stellarium 0.11.4 win64

Stellarium Mac OS X 10.6+/ Stellarium Mac OS X 10.6+

Celestia- free 3D astronomical program. Displays more than 120,000 stars based on the HIPPARCOS catalog. The program uses a very accurate VSOP87 trajectory calculation system, thanks to which you can easily see certain solar and lunar eclipses, and display the orbits of planets (including exoplanets), their satellites, asteroids, comets and spacecraft.

You can: change the number of stars you see; fly around the virtual Universe using simple controls (you can move at different speeds, from 0.001 m/s to several million light years/s); it is possible to simulate any time in the past, present and future for many millions of years in different directions; You can also turn back time or stop it altogether. It is possible to divide the screen into many parts (more than ten) to monitor several objects at once. With Celestia, you can take screenshots and record videos, from low-quality to HD (1920x1080).

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, 7; Mac OS.

Download from (DepositFiles/Letibit):

Celestia 1.6.1 win 32/ Celestia 1.6.1 win 32

Solar Model 1.2- will allow you to travel between planets, control the passage of time, observing the accelerated or slow motion of celestial bodies (planets, moons, asteroids). You can link the camera to an object and, for example, look at the Earth from the Moon.

Compatibilityb programs with Windows XP, Vista, 7.

Download(from DepositFiles/Letibit):

StarCalc is a fast astronomical planetarium program for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP, which allows you to obtain images of the starry sky for any moment in time and any point on the globe, both for the entire celestial hemisphere as a whole, and for its enlarged part. The picture can be enlarged, reduced, rotated, or printed. In addition, StarCalc has many other functions for calculating and depicting celestial objects.

Download from website: StarCalc

RegiStax. If you do astrophotography, then this is the program for you. It is necessary for aligning, adding and processing images in BMP, JPEG, FITS, TIFF formats, as well as a series of AVI frames. RegiStax has become one of the most popular programs for astrophotography. Instructions for using the program are included with the program.

Compatibility programs with Windows.

Download with (DepositFiles/Letibit): RegiStax 5 / RegiStax 5

Google Earth- a program through which you can examine our Earth, Moon, Mars and some other objects of the Solar System in more detail.

Compatibility: Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8 (for 32-bit OS).

Celestia program is a virtual planetarium. Many of us looked at the night starry sky with interest and saw many stars that we wanted to see closer. In the recent past, this desire could only be realized with the help of a telescope.

Nowadays, astronomical programs have been created for this purpose to view the starry sky from your computer. One of these programs is the virtual planetarium of the Universe - the Celestia program.

The Celestia program displays both individual planets and stars, and galaxies, allowing you to freely move through the expanses of the Universe. In the program you can see space objects not only of the Solar system, but also about 120 thousand stars, the trajectories of which are known to astronomers.

All space objects are made in the program in three-dimensional form. With the help of beautiful, realistic graphics, you can see the beauty of the Universe that you will not see when looking at the starry sky from Earth. As you travel through space using the Celestia program, you can speed up, slow down, or reverse time.

The Celestia program can be useful not only for astronomy enthusiasts, it can also be used for educational purposes. The 3D universe is very beautiful and interesting. I think many will be interested in seeing and learning what familiar and unfamiliar space objects look like.

For example, I was interested to know what, for example, the star Betelgeuse looks like. The heroes of Pierre Boulle's famous novel "Planet of the Apes" ended up on the planet Sorora, in the Betelgeuse star system, and not on Earth, as in the famous 1968 film of the same name (a remake of this film was released in 2001) and in subsequent sequels of this film (7 films were released in total) , most recently Rise of the Planet of the Apes in 2011).

The free Celestia program has a Russian interface. There are versions of the program for Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems.

Celestia download

You can easily find a portable version of this program on the Internet.

After starting the program, the program opens in windowed mode with a view of the Earth from space.

Celestia Settings

The current time and date are displayed in the upper right corner. In the upper left corner of the program, brief reference data about the space object is displayed (distance to the object, its radius, apparent diameter and phase angle). In the lower left corner the speed of movement in space is shown (now it is zero). In the lower right corner, information about actions in the program is displayed (currently this is the observation of planet Earth).

When you press the "Shift" button + left-click + move the mouse back or forth, the object will increase or decrease. To switch the program to full-screen mode, click on the “View” menu => “Screen mode...”.

In the Screen Mode window, you can select the appropriate screen resolution for your monitor. In full-screen mode, the menu bar will not be visible, which is not very convenient. The menu bar will only appear when you move the mouse cursor to the top edge of the monitor screen. Therefore, it is more convenient to maximize the program window in the traditional way for the operating system.

In the menu “View” => “Texture Resolution” you can change the quality parameters for displaying objects. Higher settings affect the performance of the computer.

You can choose the optimal settings for your computer experimentally by changing the program settings. In the “View” menu, you can also configure other display parameters (how the stars will look, diffuse light parameters, more or less stars will be displayed in the program).

In the “View” menu => “View Settings...”, in the Settings window, by checking the appropriate checkboxes, you can enable or disable the display of the appearance of space objects.

Navigating the 3D Universe in Celestia

In the “Navigation” menu => “Solar System Catalog...” a window with Solar System objects appears. If you are in another star system, then in this window there will be objects located near the specific star (if any) that you will be near.

Select the desired object, and then click on the “Go” button. In this case, you are moving towards the planet Saturn. By rolling the mouse wheel forward or backward, you can bring a celestial object closer to you or further away from you. You can move around the space object in different directions by moving the mouse and simultaneously pressing the right mouse button.

To rotate around the selected object, press the “Shift” + button and the arrows on the keyboard at the same time, the rotation will occur in the corresponding direction (you can press two arrows at the same time).

When you hover the mouse cursor over an object, clicking on it with the left mouse button will give you help information, and by right-clicking in the context menu, you will see the name of the object and can go to this object. If you click on the “Information” item, then the program will send you to the site for background information about this object.

When you go to the “Navigation” menu => “Star Catalog...” you can select a star from the list in the “Star Catalog” window, and after clicking the “Go” button, you will be moved to this star.

By moving the slider along the axis, you can adjust the number of stars in this list. By activating the corresponding item, you can change the criteria for searching for stars (“Nearest”, “Brightest”, “With planets”). Select the star, and then click on the “Go” button.

This is what one of the largest stars looks like, the red supergiant Betelgeuse, located in the constellation Orion.

In order to go to an object within the Solar System, in the “Navigation” menu, click on the “Go to object...” item. In the “Select Object” window, enter the name of the star - “Sun” (Sol), and then click on the “OK” button. Only after this will it be possible to move within the solar system.

If you enter the name of an object in the solar system while outside of it, the movement will not occur. First you will need to move towards the Sun. After moving to the Solar System, enter the name of the planet in the “Go to Object” window, for example, “Neptune” and the program will move us to this planet.

If you want to save the image to your computer as a graphic file (JPG and PNG formats are supported), then press the “F10” button on the keyboard (or from the “File” menu => “Save image...”). In the Explorer window, select the format and location where you want to save the image and click on the “Save” button.

To remove background information from an image, simply click on the information and it will disappear. Once the image is saved, you will be able to view it using the operating system without using the Celestia program.

Using the program you can record video files in AVI format. To do this, in the “File” menu, select “Save video...”. In the “Save As” window, select a location to save. Give the video file a name, select the video resolution, and then click on the “Save” button.

In the next “Video Compression” window, in the “Compression program” section, “Full frames (uncompressed)” is selected by default. If you leave this point unchanged, the video file size will be very large.

Therefore, to compress video, it would be better to choose one of the proposed codecs. After that, click on the “OK” button.

In the program window, the video size you selected will be marked with a red frame. To start recording video, press the “F11” button on the keyboard, and to end recording, press the “F12” button.

There are a large number of commands to control the program. To familiarize yourself with them, go to the “Help” menu, click on the “Program Management” item, and in the “Program Management” window, get acquainted with the commands.

There are quite a few different commands here, and mastering them will take some time. Time spent on this, in my opinion, will not be wasted.

A large number of add-ons have been created for the Celestia program that allow you to add new objects (both real and fictional) to the program. The size of the add-ons is many times larger than the distribution of the program itself.

On the official Russian-language forum (https://celestiaproject.net/ru/forum/viewforum.php?f=27) dedicated to this program, you can download a special version of the program with the Celestia Extended Pack add-ons.

Conclusions of the article

The Celestia program is a beautiful virtual planetarium in which you can admire the stars and planets and travel through our Universe.