Nightshade (astronomy software)


Nightshade is a simulation and visualization software for teaching and exploring astronomy, Earth science, and related topics. Its focus is on use in digital planetarium systems or as an educational tool, with additional features to allow it to also be used on desktop or laptop computers. It operates on Linux, macOS and Windows.
Nightshade Legacy was open source and is no longer developed. A completely new codebase, Nightshade NG is licensed under the "Nightshade Public License", a non-free license with field of use restrictions but with source available.

History

Nightshade Legacy began as a fork of Stellarium by Digitalis Education Solutions after controversy between the Stellarium project and its commercial contributor about a focus on desktop versus planetarium use. Development of Nightshade Legacy ceased around 2011.
A rewrite, Nightshade NG, was begun in 2011, with a change to a non-free license with field of use restrictions to prevent its use by commercial competitors of Digitalis. Several Nightshade NG "preview releases" have been made.

Features of Nightshade NG