Celestia is a 3D free real-time visual space simulation
created by Chris Laurel.
More than the usual 2D sky charts, even more the usual 2D
real-time software, so forget the usual photos for planets and objects
displaying. Celestia accurate engine renders textures over 3D models (just
think about a 65536x65536 map for Earth!!!)
In Celestia, the entire universe can be rendered in
real-time 3D, with real time light sources and virtually at any resolution.
3D means that you can GO everywhere and see anything from your favorite
point of view. 3D means you can orbit around objects, or travel between them.
You can also run over time, or watch objects move in accelerated mode. You
can make snapshots or movies of what you see. Celestia is not a frozen
universe, contributors are ever working on new addons to extend the Celestia
features.
Celestia 1.3.1 comes with a light installation
of 10 MB. The latest pre-release version (currently 1.3.2pre8), with new features
is available in the official forum:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/
My installation is,
actually, 330 MB. I've an old 32MB nVidia graphic card, that limits the
texture resolution. With a newest card you should download bigger textures
than mine. I'm not able to mirror all that stuff in my homepage... so to
mirror it you have to look around and download what you need.
Saturn, and Sirius seen through the Cassini
gap
Celestia general features (far to be complete, sorry):
- Very user friendly.
- It's free!!!!!
- Script support to build guided tours through the universe.
- Capture images and movies.
- Solar system browser: to navigate through all the objects in the solar system.
- Star browser: to navigate through well known stars.
- Time control: accelerated time, reverse time, set date functions.
- Full screen and windowed mode.
- Multiview, to split screen in different visualizations (good for object
comparison).
- Bookmarks support.
- Extended mouse controls.
- Click enter to reach "every" object in Celestia.
- Follow, Orbit or Track objects.
- Spaceflight simulation. Set speed between 0 and light years per second.
Joystick support.
- Labels: render separate labels for asteroids, comets, constellations, galaxies,
locations, moons, planets, spacecrafts and stars.
- Rendering options: toggle rendering for atmospheres, clouds, comet tails,
constellation boundaries, constellation diagrams, coordinate grid, eclipse
shadows, galaxies, markers, night side planet lights and orbits.
- Render stars how fuzzy points, simple dots or scaled discs.
- Customizable magnitude limit for stars.
- Three level of detail for textures (low resolution, medium and high).
- Every object has its own list of features: stars, galaxies, constellation
boundaries and diagrams, planetes, moons, locations (like cities or mountains),
asteroids, comets, spacecrafts, nebulas.
My installation list of features:
a) Celestia stars are loaded from a catalogue called stars.dat. Pascal
Hartmann version is 2 millions stars big (30MB zipped). See the differences
here
It is integrated with some minor catalogues: one for nearests stellar companions,
one for the nearests faint stars, one for pulsars.
b) My solar system is now complete. I have good textures and 3D models for every
planet (with clouds and eventually rings) and moon, and for some asteroids (many
of them use a default asteroid texture and shape). My solar system catalogue
lists all new discovered moons, thousands of asteroids, hundreds of comets, all
the newest trans-nettunian objects, like Sedna and Quaoar, the latest candidates
as our tenth planet. Also have a full list of locations for earth and planets,
with craters, cities, mountains, etc.
c) Hi-res star textures, for blue, white, yellow, red stars, brown dwarfs, and
models for black holes and pulsars.
d) Huge catalogues for galaxies, nebulas, open clusters, globular clusters
(complete Messier, completing NGC, also there are many IC, UGC, IRAS, etc
objects). My sky is now full of them
e) All the known extrasolar planet systems
f) The martian mons and Stonehenge models.
g) Lots of beautiful spacecrafts. Look for the Voyager 2.
A complete workaround of this stuff can be find in the download page
-My catalogs, mainly based on Selden Ball ones
-My original works, here thumbnailed.
M45 (Pleiads). This is not one model. It's a quaduple one.
NGC 6992 (Veil nebula)
NGC 7000 (North America nebula) It comes in two versions.
This version is brighter
WIP
- complete the NGC catalog.Status report: catalog
completed up to NGC 70.
- create real globular clusters instead of the default model in Celestia, as
done by third parts with M4.
- create good textures for nebulas.
- find good hires textures for Saturn and Uranus
MY SHOTS OF VENUS TRANSIT ON SUN DISC
A nice, sunny 8th of June for me!!!! Here are my shots taken with a Digital
camera on the image projected by a little 60mm telescope, 25mm eyepiece (36x).
Double click on thumbnails for a larger image.
08:39 UT (10:39 local time) The dark shadow of
the bright Venus. Visual estimation: 1/31.63 of sun -> ~44000km diameter (Calculated:
~42560km). The image is projected on a very white high quality 80g/mm2 A4
paper
The previous image compared with a Celestia
snapshot at the same time. I'm sure I entered the correct time and place. I
think that the difference is due to projection deformation (not perfecty at
90 degrees) and differences between atmosphere rendering and (lack) of
atmosphere projection.
11:14 UT (13:14 local time) Venus going away.
We will never see it, as poor mortals, and also the next generation, our
sons. Just let them our photos... and Celestia software. Goodbye Venus!!!!
This image is projected on a cream wooden surface
Credits
A big thank to Chris Laurel (the "genius at work" that coded this gold piece
of software) and all the Celestia team and contributors. A special mention for
Selden Ball and Grant Hutchison for their "hidden" but not so hidden contribute.
A big thanks also for all the texture creators and 3D modelers.
A special thank to Salvatore Moi, who a month ago sent me the link for this
software. Grazie Tore!
