The other system uses a game engine and external online resources which provides only solar or planetary positions, but no star data.

One extended a dedicated open-source desktop astronomy program with a 3D rendering engine where such monuments can be investigated in the first-person perspective with an interactive walkthrough. Both had their advantages and shortcomings compared to each other.

In recent years, two systems created independently by the authors of this study have been utilized for investigations into the orientation of architecture with respect to celestial processes. Most 3D editing systems used to build virtual reconstructions of such monuments however fail to provide astronomically accurate solar illumination models which can recreate the slightly different solar positions of antiquity or even prehistory, and even worse, any usable representation of the night sky. Virtual archaeology can be used to explore such orientation patterns using digital reconstructions and positions of celestial objects computed from modern astronomical models. Many cultures worldwide have left traces of sacred architecture and monuments which often show correlation to astronomical events like solstitial sunrises. 222 © 2021 EQUINOX PUBLISHING LTD an extended presentation of the open-source project Stellarium, which in the last few years has been enriched with capabilities for cultural astronomy research not found in similar, commercial alternatives. With this paper, we provide Georg Zotti et al. Cultural astronomers also value the possibilities they give of simulating the skies of past times or other cultures. Modern incarnations are immensely versatile tools, mostly targeted towards the community of amateur astronomers and for knowledge transfer in transdisciplinary research. However, in recent decades, 'desktop planetarium programs' running on personal computers have gained wide attention. The immer-sive sky simulator of the twentieth century, the optomechanical planetarium, provided new ways for representing and teaching about the sky, but the high construction and running costs meant that they have not become common. For centuries, the rich nocturnal environment of the starry sky could be modelled only by analogue tools such as paper planispheres, atlases, globes and numerical tables.

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