#gaiasky — Public Fediverse posts

Today is the day. Some time after 18.00 UTC, a solar Eclipse will be seen from the Iberian peninsula. Animations with #GaiaSky. First, a wide view of the Eclipse as it sweeps the Earth, with umbra/penumbra lines.

#GaiaSky 3.8.0 is out now! It includes exciting new features in the UI and the procedural planets system, and lots of fixes.

https://gaiasky.space/news/2026/gaiasky_3.8.0/

A few procedurally generated planets. #GaiaSky

The procedural generation system in #GaiaSky will get a little face lift with better algorithms and a more accessible parametrization. Below is a little video showcasing some of it. 🍿

📢📢📢 We are proud to announce the release of #GaiaSky 3.7.4. This release brings a major overhaul of the atmospheric scattering model with ozone absorption, and important bugfixes for the keyframe system.

http://gaiasky.space/news/2026/gaiasky_3.7.4/

Just a screenshot of the Earth. Been working on the amtospheric scattering shader. #GaiaSky

Today we release #GaiaSky 3.7.3! 📢📢📢

This release focuses on QoL improvements and bugfixes.

http://gaiasky.space/news/2026/gaiasky_3.7.3/

Loading datasets on-the-fly in #GaiaSky just got easier:
We've added a new "Installed Datasets" tab to the load dialog, allowing you to quickly jump into your library without browsing folders. The classic file picker is still there for your custom .vot, .csv, and .fits files.

Watch below! 🎬

@DLR @supertobi for #GaiaSky specifically.

Here is an animation of the Artemis-II mission and the Lunar flyby.

#Artemis #Artemis2 #NASA #ESA #GaiaSky

I liked this #ArtemisII picture of the Moon so much that I tried to recreate it in #GaiaSky.

Left is the real picture, right is Gaia Sky.

Release day: #GaiaSky 3.7.2 is out! 📢📢📢

This one comes with many new features and bug fixes, as usual. See the release notes here: https://gaiasky.space/news/2026/gaiasky_3.7.2/

Been working on a dataset to add some detail to the rings of Saturn in the form of particles. I'm quite happy with the result, especially the performance. The video shows 1.5 million rock/dust particles. Transitions to/from the ring model are quite seamless.

#GaiaSky #Saturn #SolarSystem #Astronomy

I've been plyaing around with the keyframes system in #GaiaSky and the OptFlowCam export method. After some bug-fixing, it produces very good results. It works best in a "points of interest" workflow. The following video is exported from only 25 keyframes.

Yet another video of the asteroid belt using Gaia DR3 data with the new shading.

#GaiaSky #Gaia #GaiaDR3 #Space #Asteroids #AsteroidBelt #Astronomy

Asteroids, other SSOs, and particle sets in general will get a much needed improvement in visual fidelity in #GaiaSky 3.7.2. We can now shade them (kind of) realistically while maintaining the high frame rate. In the video, we show the ~150.000 asteroids in Gaia DR3.

Testing #GaiaSky VR with the Valve Index and an RTX 5080 (laptop). Performance is very, very good!

Working with a contributor on the Simplified Chinese translation of #GaiaSky. This requires some re-engineering in the UI system, but we're getting there.

I just got a new laptop for our VR demonstrations with an RTX 5080 16GB. With base #GaiaSky and default datasets, it's getting over 700 FPS. Overkill? Possibly... Let's see how it does with VR😅

#GaiaSky 3.7.1 is now available! 📢📢📢

This release comes with many new features and bug fixes. Check it out 👇

http://gaiasky.space/news/2026/gaiasky_3.7.1/

📖 We have updated the #GaiaSky documentation with a new theme and we've done a little bit of restructuring. It should flow better and look cleaner now. Give it a try!

https://gaia.ari.uni-heidelberg.de/gaiasky/docs/master/index.html

The new release of Gaia Sky is almost ready. Today is testing day, so it's time to dust off the Valve Index and see how much VR on Linux has improved since the last time I tried (it was underwhelming). With the Steam Frame on the horizon, I'm kind of excited, ngl.

#GaiaSky #GaiaSkyVR #VR #valvesoftware #ValveIndex

#GaiaSky will get an interactive UI accent color in the next version, dropping the static UI themes system. 👀

The provisional release notes for Gaia Sky 3.7.1 (to be released very soon) are kind of massive:

https://gist.github.com/langurmonkey/491243ee899ed3d1a4b07ed07705794e

#GaiaSky #releasenotes

🚀 Gaia Sky server is BACK!

After a few months of downtime, our main server is once again accessible from the outside. You can now access installers, datasets, and documentation.

Thank you for your patience during the downtime.

More info: http://gaiasky.space/news/2026/server-available/

#GaiaSky #Astronomy #SciComm

🚀 To all Gaia Sky users: Having trouble accessing the servers? Here's a workaround to get Gaia Sky running with the base data package during the current downtime.

Check out the full guide: http://gaiasky.space/news/2025/workaround-server/

#GaiaSky #ServerDowntime #Astronomy #SpaceVisualization #TechTips

🚨 Our server remains completely blocked from external access due to the university IT department's ongoing network restrictions. This situation is extremely disappointing for our team and community.
We are urgently exploring all possible options and solutions to restore your access. We sincerely apologize for this frustratingly long and unresolved downtime.

#GaiaSky #ServerDowntime

Here are some interesting screenshots of our usage and download statistics. Note the sharp decline at the time where the server downtime starts.

#GaiaSky #stats #serverdowntime

I made Andomeda with the new procedural galaxy generator in #GaiaSky 🌠

Even though macOS does not support OpenGL 4.3, the new procedural galaxy generation in #GaiaSky will also work on these systems via a fallback option to CPU processing. It is (just a bit) slower than the GPU version, but it works.