Stellarium has multiple sky cultures - see the constellations from the traditions of Polynesian, Inuit, Navajo, Korean, Lakota, Egyptian and Chinese astronomers, as well as the traditional Western constellations. Stellarium comes with a star catalogue of about 600 thousand stars and it is possible to download extra catalogues with up to 210 million stars. It displays stars, constellations, planets and nebulae, and has many other features including multiple panoramic landscapes, fog, light pollution simulation and a built-in scripting engine.

There are a variety of ways to manipulate and view the positions of the Sun and Moon, planets and stars.Stellarium renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time with OpenGL. Quality of Technological Interactivity: The software is user-friendly for both students and teachers.Monitoring Student Progress: Not applicable.There are no classroom lesson guidelines for using this resource. Opportunities can also be provided to address the practice of representing data in graphical displays to reveal patterns that indicate relationships as well as the crosscutting concept - similarities and differences in patterns can be used to sort, classify, communicate and analyze simple rates of change for natural phenomena. Alignment to the Dimensions of the NGSS: Use of the software with teacher direction and guidelines can significantly address elements of the disciplinary core idea.When using the software to collect data concerning photoperiod, seasonal appearance of stars and/or constellations, students would be using patterns to analyze and communicate that data to others. This resource was not designed to build towards this crosscutting concept, but can be used to build towards it using the suggestions provided below.Ĭomments about Including the Crosscutting Concept