

It’s always a pleasure to present a new version of one of my favorite open source applications that is Stellarium, as it is always taking steps forward offering new little amazing things even when it is a bug-fix release like this one.

So, what have the developers of Stellarium been up to since the amazing 12.0 release that brought a new rendering engine among other things? Here is a list of the most important fixes and additions!

New things:

Added Caldwell catalog

New skyculture: Tongan

New feature for Oculars plugin: support Barlow/Shapley lenses

Control brightness of the milky way returned (LP: #1106755)

Satellites plugin: New Galileo satellites (LP: #1169252)

Control brightness of the landscapes at startup (LP: #1149882, #603376)

Changes:

Repacked default star catalogs (LP: #1124221)

Repacked locations catalog (LP: #1131036)

Refactored GUI

Update textures for some Deep Sky Objects (LP: #1126959)

Improved accuracy for Near Earth Objects (LP: #1100766, #1080154)

Fixes:

Version 12.1 fixes over 30 bugs in the core application and plugins that concern search problems, some preferences and settings not working correctly, color correction, satellite event times dissent, more precise timing, planet display problems and window boxes behavior.



The new Barlow lens feature fills a hole for the Ocular plugin. You could use another eyepiece to get the same result at the past, but now you can do things correctly with the true field of view.

The new Polynesian Tonga skyculture offers some interesting names for stars and constellations, as well as some special characteristics that derive from the various star paths used in nautical navigation, that may result in a star having many names!

Galilean Satellites and MilkyWay brightness settings are now present!

Stellarium took a small step forward with this bugfixing release that also brought some new things to play with. A truly magnificent tool for every amateur astronomer out there. Update now and benefit from all the latest goodies. Ubuntu users can add the corresponding repository in their system by typing the following commands on a terminal:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:stellarium/stellarium-releases sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install stellarium

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