What is Gaia Sky¶

Gaia Sky is a real-time, 3D, astronomy visualisation software that runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It lives in the framework of ESA’s Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is developed in the Gaia group of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universität Heidelberg).

Visit our home page
Read the documentation
Submit a bug or a feature request

Main features¶

Free and open source – The application is free and open source and will stay this way. You can even contribute to the development or the translations.
From Gaia to the cosmos – Move freely through the cosmos and descend to the surface of any Planet or do a close-up inspection of Gaia. All movement and transitions are seamless!
Gaia - Observe Gaia in its orbit and discover its movement in the sky and its attitude.
3D ready – With 5 stereoscopic profiles: Anaglyphic (red-cyan), VR headset, 3DTV, cross-eye and parallel view.
VR ready – Still work in progress but already functional, Gaia Sky VR works with any VR HMD compatible with OpenVR. See the Gaia Sky VR section.
Planetarium projection mode – Ready to produce videos for full dome systems.
360 mode – Ready to produce 360 videos.
Use your own data – Comes with TGAS, NBG and SDSS. Supports VOTable, FITS, CSV and all formats accepted by STIL.
Navigate the galaxy – Support for controllers and gamepads makes navigating the Galaxy a piece of cake.
Spacecraft mode – Jump aboard a spacecraft to navigate the skies!
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 Gaia Sky.
Internationalised – Translated so far to English, German, Spanish, French, Catalan and Slovenian.

What is Gaia Sky¶

Main features¶

Contents¶