News

By tsagrista on 27 Oct 2026

We are here yet again with another bugfix update that adds some polish to 3.9.0 and 3.9.1. Gaia Sky 3.9.2 includes a few bugfixes in volumes, UV grid labels, rendering, and the camera system. Now the new Milky Way is drawn at the right size and position, the background grid annotations are back, and a camera teleport when focusing large objects is fixed.

By tsagrista on 23 Oct 2026

Two days after 3.9.0, we are here again with 3.9.1, a bugfix release that addresses a major issue with the previous version. In that issue, the internal scene graph was not constructed correctly for proximity-enabled datasets (like the NASA Exoplanet Archive), causing a crash.

By tsagrista on 21 Oct 2026

It is time for another Gaia Sky release. Gaia Sky 3.9.0 brings volumetric rendering of the Milky Way, a new SMAA anti-aliasing implementation, a reworked camera, and support for gaiasky:// URLs, among many more new features and bug fixes.

Here is a summary of what’s new in this release:

• Volumetric rendering of the Milky Way, with dust that actually occludes the stars and other elements behind it.
• New SMAA anti-aliasing, now the default method.
• Reworked camera, especially close to planets and other bodies, and smoother gamepad input.
• gaiasky:// URL protocol support on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• The REST server now ships in the main application, with its own preferences section.
• Sesame name discovery.
• Light glow halos sized and graded from the physical properties of the light.

If you want to know more, keep reading.

By tsagrista on 20 Oct 2026

Here is a sneak preview of the new volumetric Milky Way featured in the next version of Gaia Sky.

By tsagrista on 19 Oct 2026

Gaia Sky is now available on the Microsoft Store! Windows users can install it directly from the store, making it easier than ever to get started exploring the universe.

Publishing the app turned out to be surprisingly quick and painless. Kudos to Microsoft for making the process so straightforward for developers!

By tsagrista on 5 Oct 2026

We have received reports that Windows Defender may detect the file lwjgl-3.3.4-natives-windows-x86.jar included with Gaia Sky as a threat.

We investigated the issue and found strong evidence that this is a false positive affecting the upstream LWJGL 3.3.4 library. The LWJGL project has an issue documenting antivirus detections of its 3.3.4 release, including a Trojan:Win32/Vigorf.A detection by Windows Security:

https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3/issues/1005

Similar reports were also made by users of Necesse, another application using LWJGL. In that case, antivirus software specifically detected the same lwjgl-3.3.4-natives-windows-x86.jar file. The developers subsequently removed the file because it is only needed for 32-bit Windows:

By tsagrista on 29 Sep 2026

In a little over a month, on December 2, Gaia Data Release 4 (DR4) will be made public. This data release will bring a new generation of star catalogs to Gaia Sky. Along with the release of DR4, we have taken the opportunity to simplify the way the Gaia catalogs are selected and presented.

The main changes are simple:

By tsagrista on 23 Jul 2026

We are proud to announce the release of Gaia Sky 3.8.0. This release brings a mainor overhaul of the procedural planet generation system, with domain warping, 3D biome LUTs, new presets, and a consolidated single-pass generation pipeline. It also introduces higher resolution icons for HiDPI, custom view mode panes, and many bug fixes.