Stellarium has numerous stars listed in it's star catalog. The star catalog data is located in the stars/default sub-directory in the installation or ~/.stellarium directory. The star catalog splits the data into different files. Each catalog file models stars for one level. Star records do not list the star's full coordinates. The coordinates are relative to the central position of the zone the star falls in. This means it is important to know the zone model to learn about a star's positional data. The following summarizes zone file information. These ship with Stellarium: File #Records Notes stars_0_0v0_1.cat 5,013 Hipparcos stars_1_0v0_1.cat 21,999 Hipparcos stars_2_0v0_1.cat 151,516 Hipparcos stars_3_1v0_0.cat 434,064 Tycho These[1] can be downloaded from the UI('Configuration'): File #Records Notes stars_4_1v0_0.cat 1,725,497 Tycho stars_5_2v0_0.cat 7,669,0111 NOMAD stars_6_2v0_0.cat 26,615,233 NOMAD stars_7_2v0_0.cat 57,826,266 NOMAD stars_8_2v0_0.cat 116,923,084 NOMAD [1] The bigger the star catalogue, the more RAM/better OpenGL-capable graphics card is required for optimal experience. Rule of thumb : if you don't get 60+ fps most of the time with it, star catalogue is too big.