Landscapes
From Stellarium
Contents |
How to install landscapes
When you have downloaded the .zip file for a landscape on this page, follow this procedure to install it in Stellarium:
- Determine the User Data Directory, which varies according to your operating system.
- Create a sub-directory called landscapes in your user directory.
- Unzip the landscape .zip file in the landscapes directory (if it's done right, a sub-directory should be created for each landscape).
NOTE: Older version of Stellarium (prior to v0.9.0) used a slightly different mechanism for doing landscapes. You can find a list of the old landscapes here.
User contributed landscapes (by continent)
We have landscapes for six of the seven continents (in the seven continent model) - all apart from Antarctica.
Interplanetary
| Johan - Husband Hill, Mars. Johan transformed this Mars image from NASA into a spherical panorama that can be used with Stellarium. Mars rover Spirit made this image during August 24 to 27, 2005. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell. Read more on this webpage. |
| Mike - Mars Opportunity Rover. Mike sent posted this landscape in the forums. Another nice Mars rover landscape. |
| Makc - International Space Station. Landscape made using some screen shots and data from the wonderful Celestia. Set the projection mode to stereographic, zoom out to a wide field of view and point down towards the ground to get the nice rounded "planet" effect. |
| Mathew Myrup - Apollo 11 landing site. This landscape is made using NASA photographs taken by Buzz Aldrin. Look down and you can see Buzz's footprints :) Download |
| Mathew Myrup - Apollo 17 landing site. This landscape is made using NASA photographs taken by Gene Cernan. Download |
Africa
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Idehan Ubari, Lybia. This is a panoramic view of the desert of Idehan Ubari in Lybia. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Leptis Magna, Lybia. This is a panoramic view of the theatre of the Roman city of Leptis Magna. This site is part of UNESCO World Heritage. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Sahara, Lybia. This is a panoramic view from somewhere in the middle of the Sahara in Lybia. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Volcano Waw al-Namus, Lybia. This is a panoramic view of Volcano Waw al-Namus in the Sahara. |
Asia
| Makc - Mount Everest. Amazing parorama of the summit of Mount Everest, 8.85 km above sea level. Roddy Mackenzie, who climbed the mountain in 1989, captured the image. |
| Barry Perlus & Stellarium team - Jantar Mantar. Professor Barry Perlus of Cornell University allowed us to use his panoramic photography of one of the Jantar Mantars in India to create this landscape. For more information on these fascinating scientific and architectural works see jantarmantar.org. |
Australasia
| Barry Gerdes - Beaumont Hills, Sydney, Australia. Barry made an interesting multiple-image landscape from the rooftop of his house. You can find a detailed account of how this was done in the Stellarium User Guide. Download |
| Graeme Ewing - Transit Hill, Lord Howe Island, Australia. Graeme Ewing Contributed this panorama of the astronomically significant and visually stunning Transit Hill site Northeast of Sydney, Australia. |
Europe
| Rob Spearman & Johan Meuris - English Garden, Munich, Germany. This high resolution landscape was taken in April 2007 by Rob. Johan helped with the post production. The result is a very high quality landscape. Download |
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| Rob Spearman & Johan Meuris - English Garden, Munich, Germany. The original English Garden landscape was re-constructed by Barry Gerdes as an old_style landscape. This means that it can be used with video hardware which cannot cope with single very large texture files, and yet preserves the resolution of the landscape (by splitting the images into multiple files). Try this is the original English Garden landscapes doesn't load on your computer. Download |
| Steinar Midtskogen - Voksenlia, Oslo, Norway. Steinar Midtskogen sent this huge (17 MiB!) spherical landscape image of Voksenlia, Oslo, Norway (59°58'14N, 10°38'57E, alt=348m). (Currently not working with version 0.9.0). |
| Friedrich Noelle & Barry Gerdes - Calton Hill, Edinburgh, Scotland. Friedrich Noelle took a nice panorama of Observatory Hill, Edinburgh which Barry converted into a Stellarium landscape. |
| Johan - Ponta da Piedade, Algarve, Lagos, Portugal. Johan photographed this panorama in June 2006 and stitched it together into a spherical panorama that can be used with Stellarium. You see sandstone cliffs on the Atlantic coast of southern Portugal, a lighthouse, and a natural bridge. |
| Martin Mutti - Gurnigel, Switzerland. This is the site of the Bern Astronomical Society's observing site. |
| Dmitri Ardashev - Tishinka, Russia. This is a small village between Moscow's and Kaluga's regions, in 130 km south-west of Moscow(55°18'32.46N, 36°26'42.06E, alt=195). |
| Sylvain Rondi - T60 dome, Pic du Midi Observatory, France. Sylvain photographed this panorama in February 2007 and stitched it together into a spherical panorama that can be used with Stellarium. This is the panoramic view from the amateur 60cm telescope dome from T60 Association, installed at Pic du Midi Observatory. |
| Sylvain Rondi - T1M terrasse, Pic du Midi Observatory, France. Sylvain photographed this panorama in February 2007 and stitched it together into a spherical panorama that can be used with Stellarium. This is the panoramic view from the terrasse of the professional 106cm telescope at Pic du Midi Observatory (France). |
| Jan Wedekind - River Rivelin, Sheffield, UK. This is a 270° fisheye panorama created from 40 photos using Hugin. It shows the River Rivelin in Sheffield in the middle of April 2007. The fringes (twigs and tree tops) where dimmed out using The Gimp. The overexposed parts of the horizon have been removed. Copyright (C) 2007, Jan Wedekind, Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike License 2.0 |
| Rubén Castiñeiras Lorenzo - Ares, Galicia, Spain. Ares is a small fishing village in Galicia, in the NW of Spain, close to the city of Ferrol. The 360 degree image was taken at the noon of August 6th, 2007, just in front of the "Paseo Rosalía de Castro". It has been made with 17 photos, stitched with Hugin 0.7 beta 4 and retouched with the Gimp 2.2.17.. |
| Pierluigi Panunzi - Ovindoli, Italy. Ovindoli is a famous ski resort in central Italy. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Rustrel, France. This is a panoramic view of the Colorado de Rustrel in "Les Sentiers de l'Ocre et du Fer", Provence, France. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - St Peter's Square, Vatican. This is a panoramic view of the St Peter's Square. City of Vatican. Some parts of the buildings are missing, not enough pictures... This site is part of UNESCO World Heritage. |
| Angel Juan Martínez - Cocentaina, Spain. This is a panoramic view from the roof of the Secondary School of Cocentaina, a little town of the Pais Valencià (Spain), in the mountains that are between Valencia and Alicante, where I teach Astronomy with the help of Stellarium.
Download (needs re-packaging) |
| Thomas Gatz & Matthias Müller - Dessau, Germany. This landscape shows the astronomical station "Samuel Heinrich Schwabe" and is an old_style landscape. |
| Jeroen Adolfse - Amstelveen, The Netherlands. This landscape shows the tulipfields in spring (may 2008) in Schagerbrug, North Holland. It's an old_style landscape. (file is 4.5 Mb) |
| Cyprien Pouzenc - Sirene Observatory, Lagarde d'Apt (84), France. Panoramic view of installations. Previously the site was used as a nuclear lauching pad. Now days, Sirene accepts everybody for astronomical observations. (File is 11 Mb) |
| Sveinn í Felli - Vonarskarð, Passage of Hope, Iceland. This is the geographical center of Iceland, a barren pass between glaciers. Being sheltered from southern vinds by the huge Vatnajökull glacier, a great cold mass which then eliminates most humididy from the air, makes the place unusually good for stargazing. Old-style landscape, resolution is a bit low. (File is 1.1 Mb) |
| Hugo Jenks - Woodhenge near Stonehenge. Woodhenge is within the Stonehenge environs, and was constructed around 2200 BC. The purpose of the site is not known, although of course there are numerous competing theories! What we do know, is that it comprised numerous wooden posts set into the chalky ground. These posts of course decayed, and their positions today are marked with concrete cylinders.
One theory holds that Woodhenge was a roofed building, although the absence of water erosion from the roof run-off tends to suggest that this theory is incorrect. It has been noted that the posts are arranged, in plan view, as a series of concentric egg shapes. It is interesting to note that the axis of the egg shapes aligns approximately with summer solstice sunrise, and at this latitude also with winter solstice sunset. To me this suggests as a minimum an appreciation of astronomy. Whether there was an even more significant astronomical purpose is a subject that I am currently investigating. You may like to visit my website: www.brontovox.co.uk Download |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Rila Monastery, Bulgaria. This is a panoramic view of the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria. This building is quite high so the sky area is not really large. This site is part of UNESCO World Heritage. |
| Madbros - Villaricos Beach, Almeria, Spain. This is a spheric panoramic view. Some hints for designing your own spherical landscapes. |
| Markus Dähne - Central Munich. This landscape shows the view from the Eastern observatory of the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany. During public observing sessions, Stellarium is used to help explain the sky :-) |
North America
| Hiram Bertoch - Salt Lake City Panorama. Hiram made this panorama for the KidsKnowIt Network's outreach program |
| BrendaEM - San Jose, California, USA. This panorama was made using Nasa's WorldWind. Screenshots were taken at 45 degree increments. The screenshots were layered and stitched together, and then offset until the the Northern mountains were aligned. A landscape such as this could be made of any location in the world. There is a plug-in for WorldWind called "BigScreenshot," that may make the process easier, but not automate it. A plug-in could be written to do this entire process automatically. |
| Lee Trampleasure Amosslee - Berkeley, California, USA. This panorama is centered at the Cesar Chavez Memorial Solar Calendar at the Berkeley Marina. The solar calendar has large stones that line up with the sunrises and sunsets at the equinoxes and solstices. 4096X2048 PNG photo, 8.3MB, or 2048x1024 PNG photo 2.1MB. In the larger photo, I painted the Golden Gate bridge to make it stand out a bit more. Credits and location can be found in the landscapes.ini file. Please include credits if you use/distribute this version. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - El Tajin, Mexico. This is a panoramic view of the prehispanic city of El Tajin. Theses ruins are part of UNESCO World Heritage. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Mexico Ciudad, Mexico. This is a panoramic view of the Zocalo (Plaza de la Constitución) of Mexico Ciudad. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico. This is a panoramic view of the Cuadrangulo de las Monjas in Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal. This site is part of UNESCO World Heritage. |
| Martin C. Doege - University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA. View from Farrand Field at the University, with the Flatirons to the southwest. (File is 2.9 Mb) |
South America
| Dirk Essl - ESO's Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert, Chile. (updated version with higher resolution and correct alignment) The Very Large Telescope Project (VLT) is a system of four separate optical telescopes (the Antu telescope, the Kueyen telescope, the Melipal telescope, and the Yepun telescope) organized in an array formation. Each telescope has an 8.2 m aperture. The array is complemented by three movable Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) of 1.8 m aperture. The project is organized by the ESO. A full size Panorama image of this landscape can be seen here. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Cachi, Argentina. This is a panoramic view of the Parque National Los Cardones near the village of Cachi. |
| Xavier Bonnefoy-Cudraz - Laguna Verde, Bolivia. This is a panoramic view of the Laguna Verde and Laguna Blanca under the Juriques (5704m) and Licancabur (5920m) Volcanos. These lakes are located in Reserva Nacional Eduardo Avaroa, Bolivia. |
Contributions
Please feel free to contribute your own custom landscapes here. Make thumbnails 200x114 pixels to fit with the rest of the page. Please include a location section in your landscape.ini file with the longitude, latitude, altitude and planet for the location of the landscape (see one of the pre-existing landscapes for an example).
To find out more about how to create a landscape, see the Stellarium User Guide, and examine existing landscapes. If you are having problems, posting to the forums is a good way to get some advice.
Important note on image dimensions
IMPORTANT: Make sure all textures have dimensions which are integer powers of 2, i.e. 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, ... e.g. 4096 by 1024, 2048 by 2048 and so on.
This is a limitation of OpenGL. Some video hardware will work OK with images with different image dimensions, but many will not display properly, suffer vastly reduced frame rates, and even crash the computer.
Please make sure all contributed landscapes conform to these requirements, or your link may be removed.
Be aware that many people's video hardware cannot handle very large textures. This is hardware and driver dependent. A typical maximum image size is 2048x2048 or 4096x4096.
Package contents
Please package your landscape in a .zip file with all files inside a directory in the .zip file. This should be unique to your landscape, and it would be nice it it was all lower-case with no spaces.
You should also include a readme.txt file which describes the landscape and specifies any usage restrictions or licensing terms for the images used in the landscape.
Licensing
Before you distribute images as part of a Stellarium landscape, please ensure you are legally entitled to - you must be the copyright holder for the images, or be able to distribute them for use with Stellarium under the terms of some agreement with the copyright holder (e.g. Creative Commons licensed images found on the web).
It is important to explicitly state what use may be made of images for your landscape. This should be done in the readme.txt file inside the .zip file.
We recommend an open source license compatible with Stellarium itself (i.e. the GNU GPL), or one of the Creative Commons licenses.
Example package contents
From the Mars Husband Hill landscape:
Archive: landscape_mars_husband_hill.zip
Length Date Time Name
-------- ---- ---- ----
1815308 02-05-07 21:02 mars_husband_hill/husband_hill.png
211 05-28-07 19:44 mars_husband_hill/landscape.ini
1096 06-04-07 15:21 mars_husband_hill/readme.txt
-------- -------
1816615 3 files
The readme.txt file should look something like this:
Mars Husband Hill Landscape for Stellarium ========================================== Description ----------- This landscape was taken from the NASA Spirit Rover on Mars. Files ----- This file (readme.txt) should have come in a zip file with some others Here is a listing of all the files which should be in the zip file: mars/readme.txt mars/landscape.ini mars/husband_hill.png Installation & Use ------------------ Unzip the landscape package file in your personal stellarium data directory, or the <config_root>/landscapes directory. The location varyies depending on your operating system. See the Stellarium User Guide for per-platform details. Once you have installed the landscape, open Stellarium and go to the configuration dialog. Select the landscapes tab, and select the landscape from the list of available landscapes. Credits ------- Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/panoramas/opportunity/index.html License ------- NASA Images are released into the public domain
File encoding
The landscape.ini and readme.txt files should be UTF-8 encoded text or plain ASCII. It's probably a good idea to adopt the Windows line ending encoding, (i.e. CR LF). Both Windows and *nix style line ending encoding should work OK in Stellarium, but Windows users will have an ugly time reading the readme.txt if it uses *nix-style newlines.
Need hosting?
If you have a landscape you would like to share but have no web-space to put it, email me and I'll put it on my site.
Tools
The following tools may be useful to people who wish to create their own landscapes:
| Program | Platform(s) | License | Notes |
| Autostitch | win32; Linux (using wine) | Shareware/demo | Looks like it produces good results. Registered version includes extra types of projection. No sourcecode. |
| Hugin | Linux; FreeBSD; MacOSX; win32 | GPL | Hugin is a nice GUI for Panorama Tools |
| Panorama Tools | Linux; FreeBSD; MacOSX; win32 | GPL |
