Astronomy, considered as one of the oldest sciences, is the scientific study of celestial objects (such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies) and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere (such as the cosmic background radiation).

At SCALE 6x in February, one of the first things on the expo floor to grab my attention was the scaffolding of a large telescope jutting up towards the ceiling in the far corner of the room. The device belonged to the Linux Astronomy project, which built the entire system from scratch.

What innovations are we stifling right now with patents that lock out the scientists, amateur and professional, from research? What new software can't be created due to these restrictions?

Stellarium is a great astronomy application for helping you learn about the skies overhead, but it's aimed mainly at astronomy buffs and casual users. Nightshade is a newly-launched fork of Stellarium designed exclusively for use for planetarium, teaching, and educational settings.

If I had to choose only one tool to learn or teach Astronomy, it would be Celestia. Celestia is a program that lets you get up close and personal with the planets and their moons, asteroids, stars and galaxies. You can even follow the International Space Station as it orbits the earth. Celestia runs on Linux, Windows and Mac and requires OpenGL.

Stellarium is a great piece of software that works on several different computer platforms. If you are interested in astronomy or would like to teach your children about it than give it a try.

a couple of newer entries on the Linux astronomy scene: Stellarium and Celestia use hardware graphics acceleration.

For Linux users, KStars is a fantastic celestial navigation aid that offers tons of custom features. Designed to be easy for beginners, yet powerful enough to satisfy serious astronomy fans, this desktop planetarium package really delivers.

I’ve always been interested in astronomy. But it was only after moving out of the city that I discovered merely by tilting my head up I could see some of the amazing things I had seen pictures of and learned about. Unfortunately, I knew very little about how to find interesting things in the sky.