Celestia

Celestia is a 3D astronomy program for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, developed by Chris Laurel. It's open source and GPL licensed. Since 20 October 2008, there is also a portable version of PortableApps. As for the standard version is available on the German Celestia site a German language pack for the portable version.

The program allows users to simulate large objects such as the International Space Station in three dimensions to galaxies like the Milky Way. The program uses OpenGL as a 3D library. Unlike normally at the planetarium software, the user is able to move freely through the universe. In this and other properties it resembles the Space Engine program.

NASA and ESA have recognized the potential of Celestia and used it for their own demonstration purposes (see below links). Not to be confused with Celestia is ESA's own program Celestia 2000. ESA Celestia now used in a stand-alone program (Space Trajectory Analysis ) for analysis, simulation and visualization of trajectories.

The Institute of Space Systems, University of Stuttgart uses Celestia as a live visualization for the built in collaboration with EADS Astrium system simulation infrastructure in the context of satellite development. Also used for teaching at the Institute system simulation infrastructure OpenSimKit represents the simulated rocket upper with Celestia dar.

Since version 1.3.1 Celestia is also offered as a German -language version.

Functions

  • 'Travel guide' ( collection of some of the important places in the solar system )
  • Solar and lunar eclipse calculator for all planets up to the year 9999.
  • In the basic program of the Hipparcos catalog is included ( 120,000 stars ).
  • It is possible to take screenshots and capture the moving action on the screen as video.
  • The time can be set arbitrarily far into the future or past.
  • Constellations and orbits of planets, moons, asteroids, comets and satellites can be displayed.
  • The names of all objects in space can be displayed: galaxies, star clusters, stars, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, satellites.
  • The names of cities, craters, observatories, valleys, landing points, continents, mountains and lakes can be displayed.
  • Is the radius of the distance, day length and the average temperature of the planets will be displayed.
  • The distance, the luminance in comparison with the sun, the class, surface temperature, and the radius of the revolution time of stars displayed.
  • The number of visible stars can be varied.
  • The field of view can be varied continuously.
  • The apparent brightness of the star can be adjusted in three steps
  • The image can be divided in order to observe several objects simultaneously.
  • The speed of light can be ignored or taken into account.
  • Gamepad support

Limitations

  • The default setting for the Earth is a perfect sphere. In order to depict the earth properly, it must be set in a program file.
  • All galaxies and stars are stationary ( with the exception of binary systems, where the center is fixed ). Even with very strong acceleration time it is therefore not possible to observe a rotation of the galaxy.
  • Some binary star systems are not displayed correctly.

Extensions

About 10 GB of extensions ( so-called add-ons ) are available to supplement the basic program. This huge amount is the result of the activities of a small but very productive user community that supports the program. The largest collection is provided ( see Related links ) from the portal "The Celestia Motherlode ". This " add-ons " include the following:

The textures of the planets and other celestial bodies, such as moons and comets, are characterized by very high resolution textures ( up to 128,000 x 64,000 pixels), normal maps or bump maps, Specularmaps ( for reflections), clouds textures and night textures interchangeable. For example, the earth also be satellite images, that are integrated via so-called "Virtual Textures", provided, creating a very detailed view of the planet is possible. It can be built for very high mountains or famous buildings 3D objects to get a more realistic view. Political maps or scientific textures, like gravity distribution on the planet's surface are also available and can be selected in the program quickly.

There are several databases of objects in the order of satellites moons, asteroids and stars to galaxies. Only the extended star database has two million stars and galaxies database of nearly 2,000, which also clusters of galaxies are visible. The city database of the Earth is expandable to 96,000 places.

It is possible to include trajectories of satellites. To complete the missions (eg Cassini -Huygens ) can be nachsimuliert.

The user community has developed scripts that the user performs similar to the Planetarium through the solar system. Special documentation in text format, Educational Activities, called inform, for example, about the birth and death of stars, are associated with Celestia, making such issues can be clearly explained.

It also extensions for sci-fi fans have been developed which universes from famous movies such as Star Wars or Star Trek simulate, but also self- devised planetary systems without reference to a movie or a book.

(1252) Celestia Io (moon) Cassini–Huygens
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