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Stellarium

Stellarium, the free, open-source desktop planetarium, on a Selkies web desktop.

  • Productivity
  • Tools & Utilities
Stellarium, the free, open-source desktop planetarium, on a Selkies web desktop. Explore a photorealistic real-time sky in your browser: no VNC client, no local install. There is no maintained browser-desktop build of the actual Stellarium application ("Stellarium Web" is a separate, much lighter reimplementation), so this fills a genuine gap: a modern Selkies (WebRTC) build of the real thing for amd64 and arm64. What you get: • The full Stellarium desktop app, streamed as H.264 video (Selkies) so panning the sky, zooming into a nebula and scrubbing through time stay smooth, the continuously-rendered workload where the old noVNC containers feel laggy. • Installed from Debian trixie's stellarium package, so it tracks Debian security updates. • Software-GL (Mesa llvmpipe) fallback so the sky renders even without a GPU; a passed-through GPU is used when present. • Your location, downloaded

Platform availability

Available on 2 of 9 platforms

  • Unraid
  • TrueNAS (not listed)
  • Umbrel (not listed)
  • ZimaOS (not listed)
  • Proxmox (not listed)
  • Helm (not listed)
  • Mac (not listed)
  • Windows (not listed)
  • Linux

Health score?A 0-100 score computed nightly from four factors: maintained (40%: recent commits and steady activity), popular (25%: GitHub stars, log scale), easy to install (20%: platforms, install notes, setup guides, Docker image) and light to run (15%: minimum RAM, ARM support). When the source code has been checked, a fifth factor, security check (20%: automated scan for committed secrets, unsafe desktop-app settings, known-vulnerable dependencies and project hygiene; any serious finding caps it at 20), is added. Factors without data are left out and the rest are rescaled.

78/100 Good

Maintained
100last commit 6 days ago
Popular
8010,041 GitHub stars
Easy to install
302 install platforms, Docker image
Light to run
801 GB minimum RAM, runs on ARM

Availability: platform listings confirmed today, links checked 13 days ago

GitHub stars
10,041
Open issues
415
Last commit
2026-10-07
Latest release
v26.3
License
GPL-2.0
Activity
steady

Checked 6 days ago - source: GitHub (Stellarium/stellarium)

Resources & Compatibility

Minimum requirements: 1 GB RAM, 1 GB disk. ARM (e.g. Raspberry Pi) is supported.

Checked 14 days ago - source: Docker Hub image tags and published docs

First-install notes

No first-install notes yet.

Alternatives (7)

  • Celestia - Celestia is an application for real-time 3D visualization of space, with a detailed model of the solar system, over 100,000 stars, more tha…
  • Gaia Sky
  • KStars - Accurate cross-platform astronomy simulation and astrophotography tool with Ekos suite, observation planner, "What's up Tonight",…
  • Solar System Scope - 3D simulation of the Solar System and night sky - real time virtual orrery and observatory
  • Space Engine - Space Engine - a real-time 3D space simulator, procedural universe generator and visualiser.
  • Starry Night (series)
  • WorldWide Telescope

Checked 11 days ago - source: AlternativeTo

Common questions

Is Stellarium Web the same as the full desktop planetarium?

The official site lists Stellarium Web as a separate entry from the main Stellarium planetarium.

Will the web version behave exactly like the desktop app?

A Reddit thread reports that the Android, Windows, and web versions can differ in appearance and behavior.

Can I extend the app with scripts or plugins?

The documentation page provides API documentation for scripts, plugins, and the main program.

Can I import satellite elements from a local file?

A Launchpad FAQ entry covers adding satellite elements from a local file.

Answers sourced from answers.launchpad.net, stellarium.org, stellarium.org, www.reddit.com

Community

Collected 13 days ago - public community threads