Gaia Sky is a real-time, 3D, astronomy visualisation software that runs on Windows, Linux and macOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy in the Gaia group of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universität Heidelberg).
- Free and open source - Gaia Sky is open and free, and will stay this way. Contribute to the development and translations.
- From Gaia to the cosmos - Move freely through the cosmos or explore the Solar System in a seamless manner!
- Gaia - Observe Gaia in its orbit and discover its movement in the sky and its attitude.
- Virtual Reality - The whole Universe in VR!
- 6D exploration - Represents star positions but also proper motions and radial velocities, if available.
- Planetary surfaces - Explore surfaces with elevation maps (using tessellation, if available).
- 3D-ready - With 6 stereoscopic modes: Anaglyphic (red-cyan), VR headset, 3DTV (H and V), cross-eye and parallel view.
- 360 mode - With sperhical (equirectangular), cylindrical and Hammer projections.
- Planetarium projection mode - Ready to produce videos for full dome systems.
- Use your data - Bundles Gaia DR2, NBG, SDSS and MWSC. Supports VOTable, FITS, CSV and others (STIL).
- Real-time filters - Filter any dataset by distance, magnitude, galactic, ecliptic, equatorial coordinates, and more.
- SAMP aware - Implements SAMP commands to interoperate with SAMP-ready software such as Topcat and Aladin.
- Navigate the galaxy - Support for controllers and gamepads makes navigating the Galaxy a piece of cake.
- Record and play your camera paths - Ready to record and play camera paths off-the-shelf.
- Scriptable and extensible - Use Python to script and extend the capabilities of the Gaia Sky.
- Internationalised - Translated so far to English, German, Spanish, French, Catalan and Slovenian.