Gaia Sky is a real-time, 3D, astronomy visualisation software for desktop and VR that runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. It is developed in the framework of ESA's Gaia mission to chart about 1 billion stars of our Galaxy in the Gaia group of the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ZAH, Universität Heidelberg). Explore the Solar System, the Milky Way or even the most distant galaxies of the Universe.
Gaia_Sky is available as an AppImage which means "one app = one file", which you can download and run on your Linux system while you don't need a package manager and nothing gets changed in your system. Awesome!
AppImages are single-file applications that run on most Linux distributions. Download an application, make it executable, and run! No need to install. No system libraries or system preferences are altered. Most AppImages run on recent versions of Arch Linux, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu, and other common desktop distributions.
Unlike other applications, AppImages do not need to be installed before they can be used. However, they need to be marked as executable before they can be run. This is a Linux security feature.
Behold! AppImages are usually not verified by others. Follow these instructions only if you trust the developer of the software. Use at your own risk!
Download the Gaia_Sky AppImage and make it executable using your file manager or by entering the following commands in a terminal:
Then double-click the AppImage in the file manager to open it.
chmod +x ./*.AppImage