Stellarium is a free program available for Windows, Mac, and Linux that will allow you to explore the night sky. Enter your GPS coordinates for where you are now or want to be, and see what the night sky will look like! Stellarium will allow you to skip forward and backward through time to see what the sky looked/will look like. This is a great way to know what will be where on a particular day. I use Stellarium to find out where the moon will be on a given night and determine if I should get my telescope out.
Stellarium is a great classroom program for students of any age and a great way to bring the night sky into your classroom during the day on a projector screen, or interactively on individual computers.
Stellarium allows you many options to further customize the program. One of my favorite features of Stellarium is the ability to see the constellation lines, and then also see the constellation artwork.
To download Stellarium, visit their website.
For a more advanced program to let you explore space, check out Celestia.
Pingback: Celestia: Explore Space! (Windows, Linux, and Mac Software) | ZylBlog