Something Cool: Stellarium
Armchair astronomer? Stargazer? Space geek? Want to impress people by just looking up? Then check out Stellarium.
Stellarium is an open-source planetarium on your desktop. More than just a starchart, Stellarium can take a point in time and space and see the heavens. Curious what the sky over Bethlehem was like in 32 BC? Just enter the coordinates, the date and time. Not just stars, but the planets comets, nebulas, you can even incorporate weather conditions.
Stellarium can even output to a fish-eye projector for actual use in a planetarium (or you can buy your own pre-loaded with Stellarium).
When I traveled to Tibet last year I installed Stellarium on my Macbook. The night before traveling to Base Camp, I was able to pull up my exact location and map out the stars over the Himalayas. Something very cool.
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