Still, you can't beat free, and overall this is one of my favorite astronomy programs.

Without a suitable mouse interface for this feature, it breaks workflow for many people (although hotkeys are faster in the long run). Observe the sky in night mode (red) to preserve your eyes adaptation to darkness. Discover 3D rendering of the major solar system planets and their satellites. Simulate landscape and atmosphere with realistic sunrise, sunset and atmosphere refraction. The lack of a mouse interface to send slew commands to the telescope means you have to use the keyboard's hotkeys (CTRL-1 slews Telescope #1 to the currently selected point). Track artificial satellites, including the International Space Station. It doesn't support ASCOM for total observatory integration, but it does support a number of telescopes, including CelestronSky-Watcher and Meade. The computerized telescope support is lacking. I use the angle tool, computerized telescope support, and ocular extensively. Stellarium can be extended with plugins, and comes with several out of the starting gate. What it does do, it does relatively well. There are a lot of times when you don't want to wait for Starry Night Pro and all it's features to load just to discover where a particular planet is located. It's rather short of features, compared with commercial programs like Starry Night Pro. Stellarium is short and sweet, to the point, just the way I like an application.

Stellarium reviews