How to Use Stellarium

Stellarium is an open-source software planetarium that generates an interactive display of the night sky. Users can set their viewing location, date, and time. The proper stars, galaxies, planets, moons, etc. will then be displayed correctly for the observer. Detailed information on using Stellarium can be found in the Stellarium Tutorial.

• The menus and controls in Stellarium are in slide-out menus that appear when hovering the mouse pointer near the left-hand or bottom edge of the screen. Hovering over menu options will reveal their names and shortcut keys. Looking around in the sky is accomplished by dragging the mouse, and the view can be zoomed in or out using the PgDn and PgUp keys or by scrolling right or left with the scroll wheel on the mouse. The backslash [\] key will always return to the default zoom level. 

• The search tool can be found in the left-hand menu, or by pressing F3. Type an object name in the Object tab or enter coordinates in the Position tab and press Enter to center on that position.