Gaia Sky is a real-time, 3D, astronomy visualisation software that runs on Windows, Linux and MacOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy. 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
- Running instructions
- Documentation and help
- Copyright and licensing information
- Contact information
- Credits and acknowledgements
- Gaia Sky VR
| Operating system | Linux / Windows 7+ / macOS |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5 3rd Generation or similar |
| GPU | Intel HD 4000, Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, Radeon HD 5670 / 1 GB VRAM / OpenGL 3.0 |
| Memory | 4+ GB RAM |
| Hard drive | 1 GB of free disk space |
Depending on your system and your personal preferences the installation procedure may vary. Below is a description of the various installation methods available. You can download the packages here.
We provide 4 packages for linux systems. deb, rpm, an aur package and a linux installer. You can get them here.
The aur package can be installed using any AUR helper.
This is the package for Debian-based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, SteamOS, etc.).
Download the gaiasandbox_linux_<version>.deb file and run the
following command. You will need root privileges to install a deb package in
your system.
$ sudo dpkg -i gaiasky_linux_<version>.deb
This will install the application in the /opt/gaiasky/ folder
and it will create the necessary shortcuts.
In order to uninstall, just type:
$ sudo apt-get remove gaiasky
We also provide an AUR package called gaiasky. You can install it easily with any tool capable of accessing AUR, for example yaourt.
$ yaourt -S gaiasky
This is the package for RPM-based distributions (Red Hat, Fedora, Mandriva, SUSE, CentOS, etc.)
Download the gaiasky_linux_<version>.rpm file and run the
following command. You will need root privileges to install a rpm package in
your system.
$ sudo yum install gaiasky_linux_<version>.rpm
This will install the application in the /opt/gaiasky/ folder
and it will create the necessary shortcuts.
In order to uninstall, just type:
$ sudo yum remove gaiasky-x86
We also provide a Linux installer (here) which will trigger a graphical interface
where you can choose the installation location and some other settings.
Download the file gaiasandbox_unix_<version>.sh to your disk.
Then run the following to start the installation.
$ ./gaiasky_unix_[version].sh
Follow the on-screen instructions to proceed with the installation.
In order to uninstall, just run the uninstall file in the
installation folder.
Two windows installers are available for 32 and 64-bit systems here.
gaiasky_windows_<version>.exe- 32 bit installer.gaiasky_windows-x64_<version>.exe- 64 bit installer.
Both versions will automatically install the JRE if it is not present in the system. To install Gaia Sky, just double click on the installer and then follow the on-screen instructions. You will need to choose the directory where the application is to be installed.
In order to uninstall the application you can use the Windows Control Panel or you can use the provided uninstaller in the Gaia Sky folder.
For macOS we provide a gaiasky_macos_<version>.dmg file
which is installed by unpacking into the Applications folder. Get it here. Once unpacked, you can run it by clicking on it.
A gaiasky-<version>.tgz package file is also provided. It will work
in all systems but you need to unpack it yourself and create the desired
shortcuts.
In Windows, use an archiver software (7zip, iZArc, etc.) to unpack it.
When using the tgz package, uou need to install the JRE8 yourself.
In Linux and macOS, you can use:
$ tar -zxvf gaiasky-<version>.tgz
In order to run the program just click on the shortcut provided in your operating system.
If Windows is your OS of choice, you first need to install Git for Windows.
Also, on Windows you will need to use the gradlew.bat script instead of the bash gradlew, so
make sure to substitute this in the commands below.
First, clone the GitHub repository:
$ git clone https://github.com/langurmonkey/gaiasky.git
$ cd gaiasky
Make sure you have at least JDK8 installed.
The TGAS catalog files (Gaia data) are not in the repository, so if you want to use TGAS when running
from source you need to download
the tar file corresponding to your version — see table below.
As of version 1.5.0, there are new GPU-bound catalogs which perform much better and can also be combined with the levels-of-detail structure to produce a good combo in terms of performance
and load times. Choose which catalog you want to use. Usually, the single file GPU version should work fine (tgas gpu), and has no culling, so all particles are visible at all times.
| Catalog | Description | Extract location | Catalog file |
|---|---|---|---|
| tgas lod (1.0.3) | Levels of detail (lod) TGAS catalog. CPU-bound. | gaiasky/assets/data/octree |
- |
| tags lod (1.0.4) | Levels of detail (lod) TGAS catalog. CPU-bound. | gaiasky/assets/data/octree |
- |
| tags lod (1.5.0, 1.5.1) | Levels of detail (lod) TGAS catalog. GPU-bound. Version 1.5.1 contains a fix in proper motion and RAVE radial velocities. |
gaiasky/assets/data/octree/tgas |
data/catalog-tgas-hyg-lod.json |
| tags gpu (1.5.0, 1.5.1) | TGAS catalog, GPU-bound. Version 1.5.1 contains a fix in proper motion and RAVE radial velocities. |
gaiasky/assets/data/catalog |
data/catalog-tgas-hyg.json |
First, choose the package corresponding to your Gaia Sky version and extract it into the specified Extract location. tgas lod means levels of detail, so data in these catalogs is streamed from disk to GPU. tgas gpu means that the data is loaded all at startup and sent to the GPU at that moment. Choose tgas gpu if you have a good graphics card.
Then, you need to point the key data.json.catalog in your $HOME/.gaiasky/global.properties file to the
file specified in the last column in the table (Catalog file).
Albeit not recommended for performance reasons, the legacy particle-based (CPU-bound) version of the catalog (version 1.0.4) can still be used with newer versions. To do so, extract the package in gaiasky/assets/data/octree/tgas so that the metadata.bin file and the particles folder are directly within that folder and
edit the configuration file so that data.json.catalog points to data/catalog-tgas-hyg-lod-old.json.
Finally, run Gaia Sky (Linux, MacOS) with:
$ gradlew core:run
On Windows, do:
.\gradlew.bat core:run
Et voilà ! The bleeding edge Gaia Sky is running in your machine.
In order to pull the latest version from the repository, just run the following from the gaiasky folder.
$ git pull
Remember that the master branch is the development branch and therefore intrinsically unstable. It is not guaranteed to always work.
The most up-to-date documentation of Gaia Sky is always in gaia-sky.readthedocs.io.
This software is published and distributed under the MPL 2.0 (Mozilla Public License 2.0). You can find the full license text here https://github.com/langurmonkey/gaiasky/blob/master/LICENSE.md or visiting https://opensource.org/licenses/MPL-2.0
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.
The latest acknowledgements are always in the ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.md file.
There exists a development version of Gaia Sky which works with the VR headsets supporting OpenVR. More information on this is available in the README.md file on the vr branch.