Celestia is free space 3D astronomy and simulation software that runs on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. Celestia version 1.5.0 was just released on January 26. The program allows you to travel through the universe at any speed, in any direction and at any point in time. It displays and interacts with objects such as satellites and galaxies. The program uses OpenGL and is released under the GNU General Public License.
Celestia uses the Hipparcos catalog of 120,000 stars (a product of the European Space Agency) and the VSOP87 theory of planetary orbits. The program does not use any stars more than 16,000 light years form the Sun. About 15 gb of extensions are available and it is highly customizable. For a nice overview of the wealth of the program, see this link in Wikipedia.
I noticed the new version was out though I haven’t downloaded it yet. I still have 1.4.1 on my PC. It struck me though that I should mention this program. It is absolutely awesome software if you are interested in astronomy. It does take up a bit of disk space, especially with extensions. You can even output your travels to an avi file. It is a great way to kill some time, see some beautiful pictures and maybe even learn something along the way.
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| A view of Earth from far out in space. | A closeup of the space shuttle Discovery in orbit over Florida. |
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| Mars’s tiny moon Phobos. | 1989 flyby of Neptune by Voyager 2. |
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| Saturn and its rings. | Jupiter and its large moon Europa. |
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| Extra solar planet Rho Cancri e. | Orbits of main belt asteroids (in brown) major planet orbits (in blue). |
March 1, 2008 at 2:49 pm
I discovered this program a while back, and I agree – it’s really cool! It’s sort of like Google Earth for space, because it is totally 3D and has excellent coverage of loads of different bodies.
For 2D planetarium software – more useful than Celestia if you’re trying to work out what the constellations above your head are – I’d recommend Stellarium. Like Celestia, it’s free and open source.
March 1, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I wasn’t aware of Stellarium and will download it. It looks very interesting. It says it has access to 600,000 stars and with extra catalogues up to 210 million. Wow!
March 24, 2008 at 2:15 am
well done, bro