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Sat, 5 June 2004
Celestia puts the universe in your computer
Celestia throws away the conventional planetarium-style approach to astonomy software, in favor of 3D-accelerated virtual reality. Roam around Jupiter's moons; view your city from the International Space station; travel around Saturn with the Cassini probe. There's nothing better for teaching the kids astronomy - and even geography.
Download it from creator Chris Laurel's site, shatters.net. It runs on everything from slow old Windows machines to the latest Macs, and on Linux too. My current version is 1.3.2 pre-release 8 (to download, click here). Then check out the add-ons and all the other resources.
The pic below of the Cassini probe on its first approach to Saturn shows you a little of what you get. In the program, though, the scene is moving (in real time, slowed down or speeded up), you can change perspective instantly, and you can travel to places like the Orion Nebula, M42, which appears in the picture as a pink smudge between Saturn's ring and Cassini.
Like I said, it does geography too.
Among Celestia's finest features is the Celestia URL: a hyperlink reference that takes you to a time and place in the Celestia universe. Install Celestia and then try some of these.
- Australia, Melbourne to Adelaide
- International Space Station over Ireland
- Phobos above Mars
- The Mars Odyssey probe above Mars, with the Andromeda Galaxy setting on the horizon
- 2001's Space Station V (requires this add-on)
- Mir above the Azores, 1990
- Asteroid 2002 MN passes Earth (and we didn't even know ...)
- The Cassini probe, the largest ever deep-space probe
- Passing Phoebe
- Approaching Saturn (roughly the view above)
- Approaching Titan
- Passing Titan
- Ida and Dactyl
- Io, the funkiest moon around
- Triton in orbit around Neptune
- Venus transits the Sun, June 8, 2004
- Earth ...
- in the Trifid Nebula (requires an add-on)
- in the Lagoon Nebula M8 (requires an add-on)
- in the Andromeda Galaxy M31 (requires an add-on)
- in the Crab Nebula M1 (requires an add-on)
