langurmonkey / Gaiasky
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Gaia Sky
Gaia Sky is a real-time 3D Universe application that runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy.
A part of Gaia Sky is described in the paper Gaia Sky: Navigating the Gaia Catalog.
To get the latest up-to-date and most complete information,
- Visit our home page
- Read the Documentation
- Submit a bug or a feature request
- Follow development news at @GaiaSky_Dev
This file contains the following sections:
- Installation instructions and requirements
- Pre-built packages
- Running from source
- Documentation and help
- Copyright and licensing information
- Contact information
- Credits and acknowledgements
- Gaia Sky VR
1. Installation instructions and requirements
1.1. Requirements
| Component | Minimum requirement |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Linux / Windows 7+ / macOS, 64-bit |
| CPU | Intel Core i5 3rd Generation or similar. 4 core or higher recommended |
| GPU | Support for OpenGL 3.2 (4.x recommended) and GLSL 3.3, 1 GB RAM |
| Memory | 2-6 GB RAM depending on catalog |
| Hard drive | 1 GB of free disk space (depending on datasets) |
2. Pre-built packages
This is the Gaia Sky source repository. We recommend using the pre-built packages for the different Operating Systems in case you want a stable and hassle-free experience. We offer prebuilt packages for Linux, macOS or Windows here.
3. Running from source repository
In order to compile and run Gaia Sky from source, you need the following installed in your system:
JDK11+git
First, clone the GitLab repository:
git clone https://gitlab.com/langurmonkey/gaiasky.git
Then, run Gaia Sky (Linux, macOS) with the provided script:
cd gaiasky
./gaiasky
On Windows, open PowerShell, make sure your $JAVA_HOME environment variable points to a valid JDK11+ installation, and run:
.\gradlew.bat core:run
Et voilà ! The bleeding edge Gaia Sky is running in your machine.
3.1 CLI arguments
Run gaiasky -h or man gaiasky to find out about how to launch Gaia Sky and what arguments are accepted.
3.2 Getting the data
As of version 2.1.0, Gaia Sky offers an automated way to download all data packs and catalogs from within the application. When Gaia Sky starts, if no base data or catalogs are found, the downloader window will prompt automatically. Otherwise, you can force the download window at startup with the -d argument. Just select the data packs and catalogs that you want to download, press Download now and wait for the process to finish.
You can also download the data packs manually here.
4. Documentation and help
The most up-to-date documentation of Gaia Sky is always [hosted at gaia.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/gaiasky/docs](https://gaia.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/gaiasky/docs](https://gaia.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/gaiasky/docs).
We also have a mirror at gaia-sky.rtfd.org.
4.1. Documentation submodule
In order to add the documentation submodule to the project, do:
git submodule init
git submodule update
The documentation project will be checked out in the docs/ folder.
5. Copyright and licensing information
This software is published and distributed under the MPL 2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0). You can find the full license text here or visiting https://opensource.org/licenses/MPL-2.0.
6. Contact information
The main webpage of the project is https://www.zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreach/gaiasky. There you can find the latest versions and the latest information on Gaia Sky.
7. Acknowledgements
The latest acknowledgements are always in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md file.
8. Gaia Sky VR
You can run Gaia Sky in VR with Valve's OpenVR with the -vr flag.
gaiasky -vr
More information on how to make the VR version work properly in the VR.md file.