The KStars Handbook¶

Discover the features of KStars through an online manual.

Revision 3.7.6 (2024-12-03)

KStars is free, open source, cross-platform astronomy software. It provides the KStars skymap, a digital planetarium with overlays and simulation tools, the Ekos astrophotography suite which acts as a client for INDI device drivers, and the FITS Viewer which displays captured sky images.

The KStars skymap provides an accurate graphical simulation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time. The display includes up to 100 million stars, 13,000 deep-sky objects, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, supernovae, and satellites.

For students and teachers, it supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales, the KStars Astrocalculator to predict conjunctions, and many common astronomical calculations. For the amateur astronomer, it provides an observation planner, a sky calendar tool, and an FOV editor to calculate field of view of equipment and display them. Find out interesting objects in the “What’s up Tonight” tool, plot altitude vs. time graphs for any object, print high-quality sky charts, and gain access to lots of information and resources to help you explore the universe! The HiPS all-sky progressive overlay provide stunning views from numerous surveys spanning the whole electromagnetic spectrum.

Ekos is a complete astrophotography solution that provides everything needed for automated or manual deep-sky imaging. It can control all INDI devices including numerous telescopes, CCD and CMOS astronomy cameras, DSLRs, focusers, filters, rotators, domes and a lot more. Ekos supports highly accurate tracking using online and offline astrometry solvers, autofocus and autoguiding capabilities, and capture of single or multiple images using its powerful built-in scheduler. It integrates well with the skymap, and FITS Viewer. It also has tools for polar alignment and measuring optical aberrations.

The FITS Viewer can display FITS and other format images, including those captured by Ekos. One can zoom and pan, view stretched versions of the images, see image histograms, plate-solve and find stars and coordinates in the images.

Contents

List of Tables

3.1. Stars Catalogs

3.2. Deep-sky objects Catalogs

5.1. Index Files

9.1. INDI State color code

Credits¶

The KStars Team¶

Original Author¶

Jason Harris

Current Maintainer¶

Jasem Mutlaq (mutlaqja ku.edu)

Core Developers/Contributors (Alphabetical)¶

Akarsh Simha

Carsten Niehaus

Eric Dejouhanet

Heiko Evermann

Hy Murveit

James Bowlin

John Evans

Mark Holloman

Robert Lancaster

Pablo de Vicente

Thomas Kabelmann

Wolfgang Reissenberger