Stellarium and Debut Video Capture

So as I was viewing the tutorial for Stellarium, they showed how to use Debut Video Capture as well.  I thought that I could do the same thing and found out it was some pretty neat stuff.  Instead of taking screen shots of myself using the program, I figured a video would be much cooler.  So below you'll find my video of a few of the features in Stellarium.

Since I already looked at Celestia, I'm going to be comparing Stellarium to it.  If you want to see my review on what I learned in Celestia, check out my other post.

Stellarium is cool because it is from earths perspective and you can zoom in as if you were using a telescope.  You can't fly around in space like you can in Celestia, but the ability to have the constellations labeled makes it good for an astronomy class.  Also the program mostly uses the mouse which makes the interface a little more intuitive and user friendly.

This software would be useful for a number of assignments in astronomy.  If you live in a large city with severe light pollution you could use Stellarium to give your students a perspective of just how many stars there are.  Also, if you have an assignment for your students to view the sky every night, and it was cloudy, you could tell them to use stellarium as an alternative to viewing the sky.

Specifically I could use this for two assignments.  As a prequel to both I would have the students download the software or have it downloaded in the schools computer lab.  Part of my astronomy section will be naming constellations, the students could use stellarium as a study aid for quizzes, they can start with the constellations turned on with picture and all, then slowly turn some of the helps off until they're able to name them.  Also, I would use the program as an introduction to constellations and how the sky actually rotates at night when we view it.  Since school is during the day and we can't look at the stars, this software would be excellent because it gives us that opportunity.