Celestia

Celestia is a real-time, photo realistic, 3D viewing of the solar system including the galaxy and the universe. It runs in multi-platform and is used in the study of astronomy. Museums, planetariums, schools use this as a tool for teaching astronomy and also as a visualization tool for space mission designers. It displays Hipparcos Catalogue (HIP) which has 118,322 stars, and users can choose to display the number of stars visible on the screen ad draw them in different styles. Celestia uses the VSOP87 theory of planetary orbits that provides a display of the orbital paths of planets which includes extrasolar planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, moons, spacecraft and artificial satellites which also includes a solar and lunar eclipse finder. Users can fly through the Celestia universe at any speed ranging from 0.001 m/s to millions of light years/s using simple keyboard controls which allows orbiting stars, moons, planets, other space objects and other track space objects like spacecraft, asteroids, comets as users pass by through nebulae and irregular, spiral and elliptical galaxies.

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