
# Welcome to XEphem!

XEphem is an interactive astronomy program for all UNIX platforms.

![Sky view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/sky-view.png?raw=true)

More screenshots are shown below.

* Documentation lives at <https://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/>
  where Elwood Downey —
  XEphem’s original author and its maintainer since the 1990s —
  offers a manual, data files, and user contributed scripts.

* Elwood Downey has generously released XEphem under the MIT License!
  An “XEphem” organization has been created on GitHub
  to host XEphem’s [source code](https://github.com/XEphem/XEphem).

* The XEphem community hopes to modernize the code
  to make it easier to compile, package, and run on modern systems.
  In the meantime,
  XEphem compiles most readily on older Linux platforms
  like Ubuntu 14.04.

* If you want to get started immediately,
  a Docker image
  that successfully compiles and runs XEphem atop Ubuntu 14.04
  is available in the “docker” branch on GitHub.
  It’s documented
  [in this README file](https://github.com/XEphem/XEphem/blob/docker/container/README.md).

* Otherwise,
  if you want to tackle XEphem development on another platform,
  start with the
  [INSTALL](https://github.com/XEphem/XEphem/blob/main/INSTALL)
  file in the `main` branch of the repository.

* Direct questions to the main repository’s
  [GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/XEphem/XEphem/discussions)
  by clicking “New discussion” and writing up your question.

A few more screenshots:

![Sun view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/sun-view.png?raw=true)

![Solar system view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/solsys.png?raw=true)

![Saturn and its moons](/GUI/xephem/help/png/saturn.png?raw=true)

![Binary star view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/sky-binary.png?raw=true)

![Moon view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/moon.png?raw=true)

![Earth view](/GUI/xephem/help/png/earth.png?raw=true)
