Stellarium 0.20, update for this free planetarium

In the next article we are going to take a look at Stellarium 0.20. This is the last update to this day of this free open source planetarium for our Ubuntu team. The program will show us a realistic sky in 3D, just like what is seen with the naked eye, with binoculars or with a telescope. Stellarium is an opensource planetarium.

For those who still do not know Stellarium, we must tell them that this is free software written in C and C ++ and that it will allow us to simulate a planetarium on our computer. Stellarium can be found available for Gnu / Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Among the most notable characteristics of Stellarium we can find that it allows us to calculate the position of the Sun, the Moon, planets, constellations and stars. Also has a catalog of more than 600.000 stars that we can expand by incorporating other catalogs available from its official page. It also allows us to simulate different astronomical phenomena, such as meteor showers and lunar and solar eclipses. We can have the option of taking the latitude and longitude of any place on the planet, which allows us to appreciate how the stars are observed in different parts of the world.

General characteristics of Stellarium 0.20

They have recently released version 0.20 with improvements and new features, among which we can find some such as the following:

• Se refactor and update the GUI.
• Deep refactoring code, related to the solar system.
• Many have been added plugin code improvements.
• They added almagest skyculture.
• Added on INDIGO support for the control complement of a telescope.
• Allows viewing of the last Updated TLE.
• The SIMBAD search.
• Cross Origin Support (CORS) in the remote control plugin.
• Improved rendering of Saturn.
• It will allow us to select different points of view from the keyboard.
• Were added new nomenclatures.
• They added a new type of planetary feature.
• The comet C / 2019 Y4 (ATLAS) as a large comet.

These are just some of the features that apply to Stellarium 0.20. They can consult all of them in more detail from the note about launch which was published on the project website.

Install Stellarium 0.20 on Ubuntu and derivatives

In order to use this program, it is necessary to know some recommended requirements system so that the program can work correctly:

• Linux / Unix; Windows 7 and higher; Mac OS X 10.12.0 and higher.
• 3D graphics card that supports OpenGL 3.3 and higher.
• 1 GiB RAM or more.
• 1.5 GB on disk.
• Keyboard.

Stellarium 0.20 is compatible with Ubuntu 18.04 and higher, as well as derived systems. If you still have Ubuntu 16.04, Stellarium 0.19.3 will be installed by default.

To install the latest version of this planetarium in Ubuntu 18.04, we are going to add the official repository opening a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and typing in it the command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases

If we use Ubuntu 18.04 or higher, after adding the repository, the available software should be updated automatically. The next thing we will do in the same terminal will be install Stellarium using the following command:

sudo apt install stellarium

After the installation, we can run the program from the applications menu of our system.

uninstall

If at any time you want uninstall Stellarium, run the following commands in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) to remove the program:

sudo apt remove --purge stellarium

sudo apt autoremove

For delete repository, you just have to use the command:

sudo add-apt-repository -r ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases

Use Stellarium 0.20 as AppImage

We can also make use of Stellarium 0.20 downloading the AppImage file from the website. To get the necessary file we can use the web browser or open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and use wget To download it:

wget https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/releases/download/v0.20.0/Stellarium-0.20.0-x86_64.AppImage

After downloading, we will only have to change file permissions with the command:

sudo chmod +x Stellarium-0.20.0-x86_64.AppImage

Executing the previous command, we only have to do double click on the file to launch the program.

If any user wants to try Steallarium without having to install or download anything on their computer, they can test the web version of the program.