Gaia Sky is an open-source

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

visualisation desktop and VR program with versions for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. It is created and developed by Toni Sagristà Sellés in the framework of

ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 in the context of European ...

Gaia In Greek mythology, Gaia (; , a poetic form of ('), meaning 'land' or 'earth'),, , . also spelled Gaea (), is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (S ...

mission to create a billion-star multi-dimensional map of our

Milky Way Galaxy The Milky Way or Milky Way Galaxy is the galaxy that includes the Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars in other arms of the galaxy, which are ...

, in the Gaia group of the

Astronomisches Rechen-Institut The Astronomical Calculation Institute (; ARI) is a research institute in Heidelberg, Germany, with origins dating back from the 1700s. Beginning in 2005, the ARI became part of the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University (', ). Previous ...

(ZAH, Universität Heidelberg). Gaia Sky is a product of the outreach working group of the Gaia

Data Processing and Analysis Consortium The Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) is a group of over 400 European scientists and software engineers formed with the objective to design, develop and execute the data processing system for ESA's ambitious Gaia space astrometry m ...

. The software is released under the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird. The MPL is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the concerns of bo ...

The inner workings of Gaia Sky are described in detail in the paper ''Gaia Sky: Navigating the Gaia Catalog.'' Gaia Sky offers many advanced features like the stereoscopic (3D), planetarium and panorama renderers. It also works with virtual reality headsets through OpenXR, is fully scriptable with Python and features game controller support that makes it possible to operate it even with a racing wheel. Gaia Sky is used by ESA to aid in the video production of Gaia Data Releases. A video made with Gaia Sky was also featured in the Astronomy Picture of the Day website.

Data

The installer packages of Gaia Sky contain the program but no data at all. In order to use Gaia Sky, at least a download of the base data package, containing the Solar System with low-resolution textures, is necessary. Gaia Sky offers a built-in download manager which connects to the servers at the

in Heidelberg to fetch the desired datasets. The downloading and deploying processes are seamless to the user. Several datasets are available, offering higher resolution textures, different cuts of the Gaia eDR3 catalog (up to 1.46 billion stars), other star catalogs such as the

Hipparcos ''Hipparcos'' was a scientific satellite of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 1989 and operated until 1993. It was the first space experiment devoted to precision astrometry, the accurate measurement of the positions and distances of ...

catalog, different galaxy maps (dust, HII regions, etc.),

nebula A nebula (; or nebulas) is a distinct luminescent part of interstellar medium, which can consist of ionized, neutral, or molecular hydrogen and also cosmic dust. Nebulae are often star-forming regions, such as in the Pillars of Creation in ...

e or extragalactic catalogs such as NBG or

Sloan Digital Sky Survey The Sloan Digital Sky Survey or SDSS is a major multi-spectral imaging and spectroscopic redshift survey using a dedicated 2.5-m wide-angle optical telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, United States. The project began in 2000 a ...

. All datasets are specified in

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced or ) is an open standard file format and electronic data interchange, data interchange format that uses Human-readable medium and data, human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consi ...

files following a comprehensible and well documented format.

References

External links

Official websiteGaia Sky source repositoryOfficial documentationRelease listAUR packageFlatpak (Flathub link)Version 3.5.6 teaser trailer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaia Sky (Planetarium software) Free educational software Planetarium software for Linux Science software for macOS Educational software for Linux Educational software for Windows Free astronomy software Cross-platform free software Science software for Linux Science software for Windows Freeware