It provides an accurate graphical representation of the night sky, from any location on Earth, at any date and time.

The display includes up to 100 million stars (with additional addons), 13,000 deep sky objects, constellations from different cultures, all 8 planets, the Sun and Moon, and thousands of comets, asteroids, satellites, and supernovae.

It has features to appeal to users of all levels, from informative hypertext articles about astronomy, to robust control of telescopes and CCD cameras, and logging of observations of specific objects.

KStars supports adjustable simulation speeds in order to view phenomena that happen over long timescales.

KStars is distributed with the KDE Software Compilation as part of the kdeedu "Edutainment" module.