Version 0.10.3 of Stellarium was released at the end of January. It is available (free) from:

www.stellarium.org/

According to the Stellarium website "This release brings some exciting new features. Stellarium now ships with plug-ins for predicting the positions of artificial satellites in Earth orbit, improved telescope control features, telescope eyepiece simulation (ocular) and more." It also has improved graphics, more stars, and more images of astronomical objects. The new version is available for Windows and Linux, but not yet for Mac:(

Mike

Thanks for that.

Michael.

Wow! The satillite tracking looks fantastic, you can set it up to update automatically from NORAD thingy without being a member or playing around with TLE's!

Cant wait to give it a spin!

But I think it still lacks the equivilant to 'CDC Horizon' for making your own horizons! unless it is buried somewhere in it.

It crashes on my machine doesnt even start up.

It's giving me some problems too. It works slowly, after a reinstallation, on a Windows XP machine, runs fine on a Dell under Vista, but keeps on crashing on a MacBook Pro dual-boot under Vista. Lets hope there are bug fixes forthcoming.

Mike

mykc wrote:

but keeps on crashing on a MacBook Pro dual-boot under Vista.

mykc wrote:

The new version is available for Windows and Linux, but not yet for Mac:(

I don't think even under simulation of a Windoze file system on a Mac environment is going to allow that... Shame really, since I made the conversion to Mac 2 years ago, there's only a few programmes like this one lagging behind in Mac usability.

Seanie.

After rooting around on the Stellarium support pages I found a partial fix for the bugs. Simply editing the [main] section of the config.ini file to specify:

use_glshaders = false

solves most of the problems I was having and allows it to run under Vista on my MacBook Pro . Apparently, this command solves some issue with the video card driver.

The satellite plugin is working and Stellarium transparently retrieves data from the web, and shows geostationary and "moving" (I don't know the technical term) satellites. It also gives some basic information about them. I'll try the telescope control plugin tomorrow, some users on Stargazers Lounge report that it works well. I have been using Astroplanner for telescope control, but the possibility of using the nice Stellarium interface is appealing, especially to a skinflint who loves free software.

Mike

A new Mac version (0.10.4) is now posted on the "older releases" part of the Stellarium site.

sourceforge.net/projects/stellarium/files/Stellarium-macOSX/

It runs fine on my MacBook Pro under Leopard, with none of the glitches that afflicted the Windows version, though it seems a little less responsive than the older version, especially when an object has been selected. The Satellite plugin is working, will try telescope control tonight. There is also a neat little angle calculator which allows measurement of the angular separation of any points you specify.

Mike

A new version 0.10.4 is now available for both Windows and Mac from the downloads section of the stellarium site:

www.stellarium.org/

The Mac version works perfectly on my machine. I had problems with the telescope control plugin, but following advice from the stellarium bug report forum, I found the correct name for the serial port (type "ls /dev/*" in a terminal window to get a list of devices), copied it into the configuration dialog of the plugin, and it worked perfectly. The satellite plugin gives predictions that match those from www.heavens-above.com, but are 1 hour out of sync, presumably due to a timezone issue. Predictions for the ISS do not match well, but they are for early March, and may converge as we get closer to the actual date.

The Windows version runs fine for me under Vista, and the display issues in version 0.10.3 all appear to have been resolved.

Mike

Just installed version 0.10.5 on Windows 7 64bit.
It intalls into the 32bit folder.
However, it runs very slowly - getting 0.05fps.
Anyone else with similar probnlems?

Michael.

I ran it a few weeks ago on my XP laptop and found also that frame rate wasn't high - however it seemed to be responsive enough.

However, when I reduced from full screen to a window I found that everything else on my system was grinding to a halt (my Laptop isn't a great spec however).

It seems to be quite demanding of resources.

Mark C

Mac user with no problems but my other Windoze machine (XP Pro) shows no problems either.

Check for the usual things Mike like scanning antivirus, too many tabs open on Firefox/IE to mention 2 to look out for.

Seanie.

Just installed 0.10.5 on my Win 7 64 machine.

It's running perfectly.

Check Seanie's suggestions....

Peter

Installed and working very well.
The new interface takes a bit of getting used to but
I think it's better.
Such a great programe as it's FREEEeeeeee!

Problem solved!
When to device manager and got windows to automatically update the driver.
Rebooted the PC and hey presto Stellarium is now flying away at nearly 60fps!

Thanks lads,

Michael.