Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Space Engine VS Stellarium

Compare Space Engine VS Stellarium and see what are their differences

Space Engine logo Space Engine

Space Engine is a realistic virtual Universe you can explore on your computer.

Stellarium logo Stellarium

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer.
  • Space Engine Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-12-13
  • Stellarium Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18

Space Engine videos

Why You Should Try Space Engine (The Best Damn Space Sim in the Galaxy)

More videos:

  • Review - Space Engine - Seamlessly Explore The Entire Universe
  • Review - Space Engine - What Can I Find In 10 Minutes?

Stellarium videos

Stellarium - App REVIEW - Games in Education (Astronomy)

More videos:

  • Review - Intro to Stellarium 2019
  • Review - Apple's Iphone planetarium free app: Stellarium review and comments, perfect stargazing companion

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Space Engine and Stellarium)
Space Simulator
42 42%
58% 58
Virtual Universe
43 43%
57% 57
Universe Simulator
54 54%
46% 46
Education & Reference
22 22%
78% 78

User comments

Share your experience with using Space Engine and Stellarium. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Stellarium should be more popular than Space Engine. It has been mentiond 251 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Space Engine mentions (122)

  • I'm trying to make a basic political borders map of a galaxy that's not the milky way
    I mean, there are plenty of good deep sky images out there. Try looking at the New General Catalogue (NGC) objects for something that strikes your fancy. Alternatively, you could cruise around in Space Engine and bookmark an interesting galaxy to get screenshots from multiple angles, which is what I usually do. (SE is available on Steam for a reasonable price.). Source: 11 months ago
  • Asteroid's Near Miss of Earth Undetected for 2 Days
    Computer says yes: https://gravitysimulator.org/ https://spaceengine.org/ Once the mass, velocity, heading of an object is known it becomes easier to track and fine tune parameters meaning time of intersect with earth can be calculated which gives orientation of planet and entry attitude. An exact street addres | sub metre grid reference is a big ask, but the "line of breakup" arcing across a narrow slice of the... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Infinite Photorealistic Worlds Using Procedural Generation
    Space Engine[1] is another popular one [1] https://spaceengine.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 12 months ago
  • Galaxy/Universe Creator/Generator
    This is a bit of a tall order. There are none that I know of; most folks I know who do galaxy maps either make them by hand with their digital paint tools of choice, or utilize the procedurally-generated ones from Space Engine. Up until recently SE had a free (old) version available on the site; you should still be able to find a mirror of it somewhere but I don't know of one personally. Otherwise, SE is available... Source: about 1 year ago
  • The true overlords
    Numbers as overwhelming as these are meaningless to our little minds. Then, do yourself a favor. Download Space Engine and see for yourself what it's like to visually behold the mindblowing immensity we are talking about. Now, take into account Multiverses, and consider the possibility that all those Universes may be fractal-like with n-infinite dimensions. Contemplate that we probably know absolutely nothing... Source: about 1 year ago
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Stellarium mentions (251)

  • SkyMap
    This is very cool, and looks like it targets you wanting to look stuff up and I will probably use it at some point. But I feel that anyone looking at this and thinking "oh that's cool" should also try installing Stellarium (https://stellarium.org/). It lets you see what you can see in the night sky from any location/time on Earth, and is really useful for helping you identify what you're seeing in the night sky. I... - Source: Hacker News / 11 days ago
  • Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time
    The project website is at http://stellarium.org/. There is no need to have images inside a project repository. Every maintainer already knows what it looks like. What next? Marketing materials? - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Stellarium is a free GPL software which renders realistic skies in real time
    There's even a web version linked at https://stellarium.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Constellations are younger than continents
    There’s also the FLOSS Stellarium: http://stellarium.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 6 months ago
  • Not sure what this would be. Ive seen it for years and thought it was just a weirdly rectangular cluster of stars. What do you guys think?
    They're the Plieades. For future reference you can check on what's in the sky with software like Stellarium. Source: 9 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Space Engine and Stellarium, you can also consider the following products

Celestia - Real-time 3D visualization of space

OpenSpace - OpenSpace is open source interactive data visualization software designed to visualize the entire known universe and portray our ongoing efforts to investigate the cosmos.

Sky Map - Sky Map (formerly the Google Sky Map) turns your Android-powered mobile phone into a window on the...

Universe Sandbox - Universe Sandbox ² is a physics-based space simulator where you can simulate Events and even break physics and friction with certain features.

KStars - KStars is a Desktop Planetarium for KDE.

SkyView - SkyView is powerful, easy-to-use app that answers questions about stars, constellations, and more.