Cartes du Ciel
free desktop planetarium
Cartes du Ciel ("CDC" and "SkyChart") is a free and open source planetarium program for Linux, macOS, and Windows. With the change to version 3, Linux has been added as a target platform, licensing has changed from freeware to GPLv2 and the project moved to a new website.
CDC includes the ability to control computerized GoTo telescope mounts, is ASCOM and INDI compliant, and supports the USNO's UCAC catalogs and ESA Gaia data, along with numerous other catalogs and utilities.
The "red bulb" feature is useful when using software outside on a laptop on a dark night.
According to the programmer, Patrick Chevalley, it was released as freeware because "I’d rather see amateurs spend their money for a new eyepiece than for astronomy software".
Chevalley has also created a lunar atlas program, Virtual Moon Atlas, which is also free and open source software.
“Cartes du Ciel” enters the record as free desktop planetarium. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cartes, Ciel and free can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Cartes du Ciel” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Cartes, Ciel and free provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1851766. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cartes du Ciel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.