Stellarium Basics

Product: Stellarium
Date:
Author:

Purpose:
1. Introduce main controls
2. Show ways to navigate and find information

# Action on Screen Audio

1. Hello. In this video I’m going to show you the basics of
using Stellarium, which is a free planetarium program
for your computer.
2.
3. After you download and install Stellarium, open it up.
By default it’ll be in full-screen mode.

4.
5. To look around in Stellarium, left click and drag
anywhere.
6.
7. While the view is nice during the day, it’s most
interesting at night.
8. To change what time stellarium shows, go down to the
menu at the bottom, to the time control buttons.
9. Click the speed up button several times to make things
move a bit quicker.
10. When you get to the time at night you want, click the
play button to return to the normal rate.
11.
12. If you take a minute to scroll around, you’ll just see a
bunch of stars, with perhaps a few labels.
13. To show more, in the menu at the bottom you can turn
on labels for…
14. …planets…

15. …nebulas…

16. …as well as constellation lines and names.

17.

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 Stellarium Basics
18. To get a zoomed in telescopic view of an object, click
on it, center it by clicking this button (or press the
spacebar)…
19. …then either scrolling or pressing the page up key on
your keyboard multiple times.
20. As you can see with Jupiter, once you’re zoomed in, you
can also select and get information on its moons.

21. Some of this information that may the most interesting

is the magnitude, which refers to its brightness,
22. The “RA/DE” and “Az/Alt” coordinates, which are two
different ways of plotting objects in the sky,
23. And obliquity, which compares the axis of its rotation
to its orbit.
24.
25. [show URL in callout] If you have other questions about how to use
Stellarium, you can always check out the application’s
in-product help via this button or go to the website at
www.stelarium.org.
26.
27. Thanks for watching.
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