Gaia Sky is a real-time 3D Universe application that runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. It is developed within the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart more than 1 billion stars.
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 official documentation (PDF version)
- Submit a bug or a feature request
- Follow development news at @gaiasky.bsky.social or #GaiaSky@mastodon
This file contains the following sections:
- Installation instructions and requirements
- Pre-built packages
- Running from source
- Gaia Sky VR
- Documentation and help
- Copyright and licensing information
- Contact information
- Contributing
- Credits and acknowledgements
| Component | Minimum requirement |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Linux / Windows 7+ / macOS, x86-64 (ARM CPUs are unsupported) |
| CPU | Intel Core i5 3rd Generation. 4+ cores recommended |
| GPU | Support for OpenGL 3.3 (4.x recommended), 1 GB VRAM |
| Memory | 2-6 GB RAM (depends on loaded datasets) |
| Hard drive | 1 GB of free disk space (depends on downloaded datasets) |
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 pre-built packages for Linux, macOS or Windows here.
In order to compile and run Gaia Sky using the master branch sources, you need the following installed in your system:
JDK, latest LTS version recommendedgit
First, clone the Gaia Sky repository:
git clone https://codeberg.org/gaiasky/gaiasky.gitThen, run Gaia Sky (Linux, macOS) with the provided script:
cd gaiasky
./gaiaskyOn Windows, open PowerShell, make sure your $JAVA_HOME environment variable points to a valid JDK installation, and run:
.\gradlew.bat core:runEt voilà! The bleeding edge Gaia Sky is running in your machine.
Run gaiasky -h or man gaiasky to find out about how to launch Gaia Sky and what arguments are accepted.
If running directly with gradle, you can add arguments using the gradle --args flag, like this:
gradlew core:run --args='-h'
As of version 2.1.0, Gaia Sky offers an integrated way to download and manage all datasets and catalogs from within the application. The dataset manager, accessible from the welcome screen, enables browsing and downloading available datasets, and enabling and disabling already installed/downloaded datasets.
You can also download the datasets manually here. Once downloaded, the datasets, which usually come in .tar.gz packages, can be extracted directly in the Gaia Sky data directory.
Gaia Sky VR works with OpenXR-enabled runtimes to interface with virtual reality sets.
Run Gaia Sky in VR using the -vr flag from the CLI, or, on Windows, run the gaiaskyvr.exe file.
gaiasky -vrThe most up-to-date information on Gaia Sky VR, as well as how to install and run it, is available in the official documentation:
The most up-to-date documentation of Gaia Sky is always hosted at gaia.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/gaiasky/docs. The documentation source repository is hosted here.
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 opensource.org/licenses/MPL-2.0.
The main webpage of the project is zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreach/gaiasky. There you can find the latest versions and the latest information on Gaia Sky.
Find information about contributing translations, code or ideas in the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
The latest acknowledgements are always in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md file.