The Earth is probably the best planet I've ever been to, so I like to keep abreast of what's going on in the world. I found this desktop background great for monitoring cloud cover, the advance of day and night and noctornal lights around the globe.

Although the cloud cover only renews itself every 3 hours, you might be able to find a server faster than those built into the Desktop Earth and apply this for quicker generation. The illuminated surface of the Earth updates every minute though, so it's great for finding out where the Sun is concentrated at any given moment. I would have liked to have seen a few more options, such as the ability to rotate the image on your desktop, but on the whole Desktop Earth provides a decent solar clock, a rudimentary weather chart and, more importantly, a stunning view from your desktop.

Download Desktop Earth 2.0.1 in Softonic

EarthView is a dynamic desktop wallpaper and screensaver, which displays beautiful views of the earth with daylight and night shadows. It produces colorful, high quality, high resolution images for every screen resolution - even beyond 1600x1200. The program supports map and globe views, urban areas, city lights, atmospheric effects, clouds, local time display and much more.

EarthView supports different maps that show our planet earth in different ways, like photographic or artistic. Many options allow total customization of all view parameters. EarthView has won many awards for its absolutely breathtaking images.

Main features:

• High detail view of the earth
• Day and night view
• Atmospheric effects
• Urban areas and city lights
• Clouds (internet download possible)
• Map and globe projection
• Several beautiful maps to choose from
• Location and local time of more than 3000 cities worldwide
• Wallpaper and screen saver support
• Multiple monitor support
• Many options for full customization

Download EarthView 3.9.2 in Softonic

WALL32 is a self-contained, real-time wallpaper generator, which simulates the Earth's & Moon's illumination by the Sun. It consists of a single EXE-file and runs in background. It reads the clock and timezone information of your PC and calculates the real-time illumination (every 5 minutes for the earth & every 30 minutes for the moon wallpaper). If time/date or timezone is changed, the program immediately updates the wallpaper.

Download Wall32 1.0 in Softonic

EarthDesk has a database of 10,000 cities you can choose to set as the map’s centering point. The preferences menu also includes a pop-up menu to provide information about a city, such as sunrise and sunset, moonrise & moonset, current local time, coordinates, etc

Besides a city, the centering point can also be set as 0° N by 0° E, or it can follow subsolar and sublunar points and antipodes. The map itself can be displayed as one of 11 different projections, including the familiar Mercator projection and a standard globe. You can select a Living Earth mode to simulate a view from space (sans clouds) which even shows city lights during the night. Alternatively, you can select a political map mode, displaying country and state boundaries.

Download EarthDesk 4.5 in Softonic

APOD is a lean piece of software that automatically brings to your desktop a new daily inspiring editor-picked astronomy picture with an explanation written by professional astronomers. Astronomy Picture of the Day is a web site hosted by NASA and maintained by professional astronomers who pick a new exciting beautiful astronomy picture every day. Astronomy Picture of the Day has been active for more than 7 years, successfully sharing the beauty of the universe with us all. APOD brings it one step further, setting those beautiful astronomy pictures, optionally with their scientific explanation, as your desktop wallpaper.

Download APOD 1.0 in Softonic

Get the image of the Eta Carinae star captured by the Hubble telescope. This star is capable of releasing much more energy than the Sun. For example, in 1843, it released 10 Million times more energy than the Sun ever could.

Download Eta Carinae Wallpaper in Softonic