Stellarium is a great open source (and free) desktop planetarium software package. One of the nice features is that the developers left access to the scripting engine (the application uses Qt and QtScript is a standard scripting environment)

I am in the process of creating scripts that show specific objects for a time period; I use these while people are arriving/waiting for a presentation to start at a Star Party.

More details can be found in the readme.txt file in the download. Unzip the files into your Stellarium scripts directory (remember if using Win 7 this is 'hidden' under the username/appdata/roaming directory)

Danger Will Robinson Danger: This is my first shot at Stellarium scripts. Probably not a good thing to learn from.

To the extent possible under law, Brewster LaMacchia has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to Stellarium scripts. This work is published from: United States.