Star Mapping Software - Stellarium

[Waddizzle]

F.Y.I.  This software application made my head explode.

I have been hunting around for info about astrophotography.  It began by looking for videos on how to image stacking and noise reduction with shots of the night time sky.  However, I ran across a software package, Stellarium, that you can use to find out where tens of thousands of celestial objects can be found in the night sky.  It is available for Windows, Mac, and smart devices. 

It uses a real time display of the sky, calculated from any set of GPS coordinates on Earth, to show you what you should see.  It even identifies where the reference stars are located so that you can set up an equatorial mount.  Taking night time photos is on my bucket list for the summer.  With the help; of another web site, Dark Sky Finder, I need to drive a couple of hours to get good sky, relatively free from light pollution.

[Waddizzle]

I suppose a screen shot would be useful.  It maps tens of thousands of objects, even exo-planets.  The position in the sky of an object, in this case Mars, is tracked in real time.  Those numbers of the left side are dynamically and continously updated.

I guess I like it because it is open source.