
Copyright © 2001-2023 Jason Harris and the KStars Team
KStars is free, open source, cross-platform Astronomy Software. It provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects,all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites. For students and teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales, the KStars Astrocalculator to predict conjunctions, and many common astronomical calculations. For the amateur astronomer, it provides an observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them. Find out interesting objects in the “What's up Tonight” tool, plot altitude vs. time graphs for any object, print high-quality sky charts, and gain access to lots of information and resources to help you explore the universe! HiPS all-sky progressive overlay provide stunning views from numerous surveys spanning the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Included with KStars is Ekos astrophotography suite, a complete astrophotography solution that can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCDs, DSLRs, focusers, filters, and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline astrometry solver, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using the powerful built in sequence manager.
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2. A Quick Tour of KStars
- 3. Configuring KStars
- 4. Command Reference
- 5. KStars Tools
- 6. Command-Line mode for Image Generation
- 7. Astronomical Device Control with INDI
- 8. Questions and Answers
- 9. The AstroInfo Project
- AstroInfo: Table of Contents
- Celestial Coordinate Systems
- The Celestial Equator
- The Celestial Poles
- The Celestial Sphere
- The Ecliptic
- The Equinoxes
- Geographic Coordinates
- Great Circles
- The Horizon
- Hour Angle
- The Local Meridian
- Precession
- The Zenith
- Epoch
- Julian Day
- Leap Years
- Sidereal Time
- Time Zones
- Universal Time
- Telescopes
- Blackbody Radiation
- Dark Matter
- Flux
- Luminosity
- Parallax
- Retrograde Motion
- Elliptical Galaxies
- Spiral Galaxies
- Magnitude Scale
- Stars: An Introductory FAQ
- Star Colors and Temperatures
- Cosmic Distance Ladder
- 10. Credits and License
- Index
List of Tables
- 3.1. Stars Catalogs
- 3.2. Deep-sky objects Catalogs
- 5.1. Index Files
- 7.1. INDI State color code