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Ephemeris: 06/05/2025 – The free planetarium program I use

June 5, 2025 Comments off

This is Ephemeris for Thursday, June 5th. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 26 minutes, setting at 9:24, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:58. The Moon, 3 days past first quarter, will set at 3:14 tomorrow morning.

Due to my physical shortcomings, which started about five years ago, I’m not able to get out under the stars as much as I used to. My observing is basically confined to star parties that the Grand Traverse Astronomical Society hosts. Most of my “observing” is done using a planetarium program called Stellarium. It is, to my mind, the best and most accurate portrayal of the heavens of the planetarium programs that I’ve seen, and it’s free and open source! It can be downloaded from the Internet for computers: Windows, Macs, and Linux from stellarium.org. A web based version, which you don’t even have to download, is stellarium-web.org. There’s also versions for Android smartphones, iPhones and tablets.

    Addendum

    A view of the sky looking up and southeastward using Stellarium.
    A view of the sky looking up and southeastward using Stellarium. I clicked on the star Arcturus and information on it is shown on the left. It is more informatiom that I usually need. Many of the images I create use Stellarium as the base component. For the images I create for the blog, I acknowledge the free apps used to create them. Click or tap on the image to enlarge it.
    The January 24, 1925 total solar eclipse that was visible in Traverse City, recreated using Stellarium.
    The January 24, 1925 total solar eclipse that was visible in Traverse City, recreated using Stellarium. See that post here. I used one of the supplied landscapes, when showing morning planets that are visible relatively close to the Sun in the winter.
    Categories: Astronomical Software, Ephemeris Program Tags: ,