Here is the list of compatible telescopes with either ways. The telescope server communicates with Stellarium using a stellarium-specific protocol described here (source). The only advantage I see about using a telescope server instead of the direct link is that it can be distributed on the network. Since December 2017, with version 17.0, it is finally possible to use INDI for telescope control! It connects to the telescope devices either directly, with the serial port, or using the telescope servers from the first method. The second mode is using the control plug-in, with its graphical user interface.

It requires command-line interaction and manual configuration. The first mode is using a telescope server, a stand-alone application interacting with the telescope device. Two modes of interaction are possible, as explained on their wiki page for telescope control. It does not check for sun-pointing or mount collision. Stellarium has the ability to control telescopes for GoTo operations. It is also open source, available on github. New in November 2018: there is a Web version of Stellarium, available on. Stellarium is written in C++ and Qt and is working on most operating systems. It is the perfect sky map for beginners and for realistic rendering. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope. Stellarium is a free planetarium for your computer.

Also, the telescope will report its position to the software and thus be displayed on the map, which is very useful in case of manual slewing. Clicking on the map and asking the software for telescope slewing is quite simple and useful. It works for absolute- and relative-pointing telescopes. The telescope control part, with the exception of Stellarium for which it's described in its own subsection below, uses the generic telescope link known as INDI. They can be used to display the sky that you will currently see above you, navigate in some areas of the sky in a quest for a good observation target, search for particular objects and even control telescopes. The software listed in this category present a sky map, some in a realistic way, some in a more symbolic way.

Stellarium web server