Best free astronomy programs

Nonetheless, in this list, we present you with our choice of ten stargazing applications that cover the most ground, from planetarium simulations to an app that automatically searches for near-earth objects. You may also like to later check out other articles in this series, including one covering free stargazing apps , and another the best premium astronomy apps currently available on the market.

AstroGrav is a solar system simulator with a difference. All movements of solar system bodies are based on their gravitational interactions with other bodies, meaning that you get gravitationally correct motions of asteroids, planets, and comets. The software takes the effects of general relativity into account, ad used superb interactive three dimensional rendering that allows you to rotate, and zoom into parts of the solar system while you watch it evolve.

AstroGrav includes a background of more than stars, all the constellations, and planetarium-style viewing points from anywhere in the world. Other features include:. Apart from the solar system, you can also explore the gravitational effects of exoplanet systems, the collision of globular star clusters, or even watch the evolution of planetary systems from accretion discs. In fact, almost any situation in which gravity is the dominant force can be simulated accurately. AstroGrav is available for both Mac and Windows, and a free, but fully functional trial in several languages is available for download.

While there are hundreds of planetarium software suites available, Stellarium is the only free software that is also used in commercial planetaria all over the world today. Stellarium runs on all major operating systems, and in all cases, the rendered views are almost indistinguishable from what would be seen through a telescope, binoculars, or with unaided vision. The following is a list of features taken from the Stellarium homepage :.

Aladin Sky Atlas This sky atlas software enables users to view astronomical images, superimpose entries from astronomical database, and gain access to most of the astronomical servers worldwide such as VizieR service, Simbad database, Hubble images, etc. C2A Computer Aided Astronomy C2A is an easy-to-use planetarium software that allows you to create detailed views of stellar fields, suitable to both professional and amateur astronomers. The planetarium software has catalogues with millions of stars, illustrations of constellations, nebulae images, as well as planets and their satellites.

Other features include fisheye projection, time control, equatorial and azimuthal grids, eclipse simulation, star twinkling, and many more. Users can zoom out for the whole star sky viewing or zoom in for details.

The presentation of the constellation overlays and descriptions are beautifully done. The lunar calendar is one of the oldest calendars in modern society. A lunar month can only be 29 or 30 days long. This is different than a solar-based calendar, where the length is arbitrarily fixed. I have had a number of moon phase calendars installed on my Android phone in the past, and they all seem to work well enough. The problem with some of them, however, is the number of ads placed in the app, and the UX design.

I found this one to have the nicest design out of all of the moon phase apps available, with easy access to a monthly calendar available in the Pro version. This app is nicely designed while also providing and a lot of great information. It includes augmented reality of the constellations but also the latest news in astronomy, a calendar of celestial events including a daily stargazing index and weather , and a list of objects that are visible tonight i. You get an alarm a few minutes before a pass.

You will never miss it. ISS Detector will also check if the weather conditions are right. A clear sky is perfect for spotting. I know there are a lot of people interested in capturing the space station passing overhead. To do this, you must know exactly where and when the event will happen, and this app can help you plan for that moment. Use this app to send you an alarm before an upcoming ISS pass. The NightShift stargazing and astronomy app is a great replacement.

It delivers useful information at a glance including the sunset time, observing conditions, moon phase, visible planets, and even meteor showers. NightShift is one of my favorite new astronomy apps Android only. This simple, quick and easy app allows you to analyze the lighting conditions via light sensor, and displays the information on the screen when required. You can also help preserve your night vision when doing some casual visual observing with your binoculars or telescope in the backyard.

The application tracks and draws the position of the Polaris or Octant in real-time and also displays its hour-angle, the local sidereal time, current local time and the longitude of the place. It gives me the position of Polaris for my location, and I just need to replicate the view through my telescope mount.

Built with a sleek dark design, it appeals to both tourists and serious aurora watchers by telling you what you want to know — whether that is exactly how likely you are to see the aurora borealis or details about the solar winds and high-resolution sun imagery. Seeing the northern lights can be an exhilarating experience, and can be very rare depending on your location. It is an astronomical event that you definitely want to receive a heads-up literally about.

If you care about space, not knowing about a beautiful aurora display in your area until after it has happened could be a painful experience! The official Heavens-Above app provides you with precise pass predictions for the ISS, visible satellites and radio satellites. It has large integrated deep sky objects databases and provides an opportunity to create any number of user own object databases. I hope this list of astronomy apps has given you at least 1 new useful tool for astronomy and astrophotography.

My absolute favorite app is probably Stellarium, but that is probably because I have been using it for so long and am very comfortable with it. I really enjoyed putting together this list of stargazing apps, because I found a bunch of great new astronomy apps in the process. My favorite new apps to me were Astrospheric, and NightShift. The best astronomy app for you will likely be something that works especially well on your operating system, and that fits your specific needs.

Cartes du Ciel is also known as Skychart. It is a very easy to use planetarium program. Its in depth index found every object in my test sample with the exception of UGC Additional catalogs for stars down to magnitude 16 UCAC3 are available on the website, along with several specialty catalogs. Cartes du Ciel has a calendar calculating ephemerides for twilight, planets, sun, moon, comets, asteroids, and solar and lunar eclipses between any two dates.

And there is a variable star observer with the predictions of minima and maxima for many variable stars for the next couple of cycles. It requires Windows, Linux, and Mac versions. The program includes images of many deep space objects right in the planetarium window. However, the online documentation indicates that planetary images are available in the Linux version. No bookmarks. Computer Aided Astronomy. Computer Aided Astronomy is also known as C2A. It was also fairly easy to use.

Its index is second only to Cartes du Ciel in thoroughness. There are several additional catalogs for download. Computer Aided Astronomy has an ephemeris generator which can generate tables for the sun, planets, moon, comets, and asteroids between any two dates. There are tools to generate trajectories of planets, asteroids, and comets between any two dates. One tool shows the moon phases for the entire month. The Ecliptic View tool displays an animated view of the solar system with comets and asteroids.

It provides the data section to the left of the planetarium window with the details about the object on display. It also provides the ability to move forward or back through recent views and the ability to bookmark views.

There are a lot of images included with the program. Unlike several of the other planetarium programs the images are viewed through a separate window in the image browser.

If there is an internet connection, the program can download images from either the ESO or the STScl sky surveys for display in either the image viewer or directly in the planetarium field of view.