Gaia Sky - Explore the Universe Directly From Your Computer
A real-time 3D astronomy visualisation desktop and VR application for Windows, Linux and macOS. It was developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about a billion stars of our Galaxy in the Gaia group at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universitat Heidelberg).
The program lets you explore the Universe directly from your computer in a virtual environment. Fly freely from planet to planet and star to star, free of any gravitational pull. It also supports virtual reality headsets to let you travel in our Milky Way Galaxy or even farther into the cosmos in a truly immersive manner.
Among its many features, Gaia Sky allows for an impressive amount of configuration, especially when it comes to the graphics. You're able to tweak a lot of aspects such as the brightness of stars and the size of the atmospheres on planets. You can also adjust the colours used by the software and the background image.
There's a lot more to Gaia Sky than just the user interface and the graphics, however. The program also lets you extend its functionality with scripting and a REST server feature. It also includes a planetarium projection mode and is ready to produce videos for spherical full-dome systems.
To make the most of Gaia Sky you'll need a fairly beefy computer, though. It starts fairly slowly even on a 12th or 13th generation Intel processor and uses OpenGL for advanced graphics. This requires a decent amount of RAM, too.