learn how to use Celestia Space Simulator

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

If you don't have Celestia, download it here, version 1.6.1(Celestia is available in Windows, Mac and Linux):
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html

here is something how to create an object

first is an SSC file(planets, asteroids, moons, comets etc...)

Spoiler

"name of object" "name of star" {
Class Class of object
Mesh   If you need it, this is usual for asteroids and comets
Texture Map of object
Radius Size of planet

         EllipticalOrbit {
                SemiMajorAxis Orbit for object in AU
                Period Orbital Period of object in Earth Years
                Inclination How much skewed the orbit is in degrees
                Eccentricity If the orbit is circular or elongated, only from 0-0.99
         }

         RotationPeriod Rotation of object in Earth Days
         Albedo Reflection of object, only from 0-0.99

}

STC file(creating of stars):

Spoiler

"name of star"
{
   RA Position of star
   Dec Posistion of star
   Distance The Distance of star from our Sun     
   SpectralType "which class of star(choose of O, M, G, L, T, F, B, K, C, R, N, S, WC, WN, WD or NeutronStar"
   AbsMag Magnitude of star(you can choose AbsMag or AppMag         
}

If you want some planets that don't exist in Celestia already, you can create them from this list(it is minor planets and it is up to 210.000 objects, I have began on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minor_planets

you can add this objects too if you want:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-periodic_comets
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_periodic_comets

here is a list of objects that already exist in Celestia:
planets:
Mercury
Venus
Earth(Including moon)
Mars(Including moons)
Jupiter(Including moons)
Saturn(Including moons)
Uranus(Including moons)
Neptun(Including moons)
Pluto(Including moons, except the newly discovered moon "P4")
Spacecrafts:
Cassini
Galileo
Hubble
ISS
MIR
Asteroids:
1 Ceres
2 Pallas
3 Juno
4 Vesta
951 Gaspra
243 Ida(Including moon)
433 Eros
25143 Itokawa
4179 Toutatis
1620 Geographos
216 Kleopatra
1998 KY26
2063 Bacchus
6489 Golevka
4769 Castalia
2060 Chiron
Comets:
Halley
Borrelly
Ikeya-Zhang
Hale-Bopp
Dwarfplanets:
136199 Eris(Including moon)
13672 Makemake
136108 Haumea(Including moons)
90482 Orcus
50000 Quaoar
28978 Ixion
20000 Varuna
55565 2002 AW197
2004 XR190
90377 Sedna

and remember, to create SSC and STC, you need to set it in notepad and when you are going to save the name must be like this:
example.ssc
example.stc

if you don't have .ssc or .stc it will not work

If you wan't addons, download them here:
http://celestiamotherlode.net/

the forum of Celestia is here:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/

and good luck and enjoy it

[Tsanten Eywa 'eveng]

If you want the newest version of Celestia, download it here: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html


Celestia is available for Windows, Mac and Linux


What's new about Celestia 1.6.1, difference to previous version 1.6.0

Bug fixes:
* Removed extraneous colons from nearstars.stc
* Fixed truncation of long label strings in East Asian locales
* Increased size of Goto Object dialog to prevent translated strings from being
  truncated
* Fixed i18n bug with scripting message
* Removed duplicate install of stars.dat.
* Fix code taking address of a temporary result.
* Fixed compile warnings in 1.6.1 caused by redfinition of UINT64_MAX
* Corrected encoding of cel URLs with non-ASCII characters
* Added check to prevent a crash when string decoding fails

Data file updates:
* Updated extrasolar planets data files.
* Updated solar system locations files.
* Updated numberedmoons.ssc file.
* Updated Galileo add-on.

Platform-specific changes:
* Linux: Add missing files from extras-standard to Makefiles.
* Windows: Fixed i18n bug [2753461]
* Windows: Save FoV value in bookmarks
* Windows: Added ecliptic line setting to View Options dialog box
* Windows: Fixed i18n bug in Windows Script menu
* Windows: Added link to new HTML help files to Help menu
* Windows: Fixed invisible context menu in fullscreen mode (ATI cards)
* Windows: Fixed menu bar overlapping top of 3D view (ATI cards)
* Windows: Save and restore locations to/from registry
* Windows: Fixed startup crash when using fullwidth utf-8 characters
* Windows: Increased Inno Setup compression settings
* Windows: Allow installer to be run without administrator privileges.

Internationalization:
* Additional string translations
- Globular clusters
- "Nebula" and "Open cluster"
- World capitals
* Removed r and R commands from localized help files
* Updated translations
* Additional languages
- Added Chinese Traditional translation
- Added Slovak translation
- Added Galician translation by Xabier Cancela
- Added Belarusian translation from <[email protected]>
- Added Norwegian translation from FreewareTips
- Added Turkish translation
* Fonts
- Lighter weight Japanese fonts
- Updated simplified Chinese fonts
- Added Belarusian fonts

Features:
* Changed the name of 'Celestial' grid to 'Equatorial'
* Added Runar and Christian's HTML help files
* Added Solstice Mission extension for Cassini in 1.6.1 branch.

Scripting:
* Celx scripting functions:
- Added seturl / geturl commands
- Added synchronizetime / istimesynchronized commands
- Added settextcolor / gettextcolor commands
- Added observer:orbit method
- Added celestia:runscript method
- Made orbitPeriod field available for stars via object:getinfo
* Cel scripting:
- Added boolean occludable parameter to mark command
- Added settextcolor command
* Added mousemove Lua hook

Code optimization and reorganization:
* Fixes for gcc-4.5, and include -ldl for systems that need it.
* More granular setting of CFLAGS.