Using a planetarium program is a very common thing for any amateur astronomer. I use three such programs, namely: Stellarium, Cartes du Ciel (SkyCharts), and KStars.

When I select a Linux version to run, I always use the latest stable long term release version. For example, for XFCE based Xubuntu, I am now on 16.04.

However, being with a long term release version means that for some software packages, you will have older versions. One such case is telescope automation platform, Ekos and the associated INDI Library.

To make sure that you are running the latest Ekos and INDI library, you can do the following:

First, purge all the KStars and INDI packages, if they are installed:

There are over 70 languages in the world with just whistled sounds. They are spread around the world, from The French Pyrenees, the Canary Islands, Turkey, the foothills of the Himalayas, and the Amazon Basin.

They are usually used in areas where there are hills and valleys, or forests, where the normal human speech does not spread readily.

The following articles explore more this fascinating topic:

Taking pictures of the night sky almost always involves exposure times that are more than 30 seconds. This is often couple with taking many pictures for later stacking into better images.

For this, the camera has to be set to Bulb mode. You can automate taking multiple exposures by using an intervalometer, which is a remote release with a device with some electronic circuits and LCD screen to make all this possible.

You can also automate this using a Linux computer running gphoto2 software. The computer can be as small as a Raspberry Pi, or a laptop.

Vinton Cerf, one of the founders of the internet, is echoing something that I have been concerned about for a long time: We are going backwards.