Planetarium Software ‘Stellarium’ Reached New Major 0.16 Release

Stellarium, a free, open-source and cross-platform planetarium software, has reached the new major 0.16.0 release one day ago. Features ability to run multiple software instances.

Stellarium 0.16.0 is a stable version based on Qt5.6 (can still be built with Qt5.4) that introduces some new features, 38 bug-fixes, and a huge list of other changes.

New features in Stellarium 0.16.0:

• RemoteSync plugin, allows running multiple instances of Stellarium.
• Non-spherical models for solar system objects like asteroids and small moons.
• Solar system config file is now split into two parts.
• AstroCalc feature extension: What’s Up Tonight, graphs, …
• DSO: Addition of catalogs of peculiar galaxies
• New Skycultures: Belarusian, Hawaiian Star Lines
• Telescope plugin: support for the RTS2 telescope system.
• Location can now be read from a GPS device.

For the full list of changes, read the announcement.

How to Install Stellarium 0.16.0 in Ubuntu 16.04 / Higher:

The official PPA repo has built the packages for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 16.10, Ubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu 17.10, Linux Mint 18.x.

1. Add the PPA.

Open terminal via Ctrl+Alt+T or by searching for “terminal” from app launcher, when it opens, run command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases

Input your password (no visual feedback) when prompts and hit Enter.

2. Then upgrade Stellarium via Software Updater:

or by running command in terminal:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install stellarium

How to restore:

For any reason, you can restore to the stock version of Stellarium in your Ubuntu by purging the PPA via command:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge && sudo ppa-purge ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases