I went on irc for help and alexwolf provided the following workaround which fixed the problem:
Open ~/.stellarium/config.ini and change all three instances of http://stellarium... to https://www.stellarium...
After making this change stellarium works absolutely fine. Thank you.
I went on irc for help and alexwolf provided the following workaround which fixed the problem:
Open ~/.stellarium/ config. ini and change all three instances of http:// stellarium... to https:/ /www.stellarium...
After making this change stellarium works absolutely fine. Thank you.