I was watching Cosmos on the Discovery Channel last night and it got me thinking - what kind of software is out there for visualizing the solar system and the distances between the planets/moons, etc.?
I discovered Celestia, a very cool piece of open source software that is to the Solar System what Google Earth is to Earth.
They use awesome satellite and telescope images to texture map bodies in the galaxy. These bodies are accurately located in space based on the current time, or whatever time you want. You can move around in space, go to the surface of planets and moons, pan and zoom, optionally hide/show the lines of constellations, etc. There’s a neat feature that will calculate eclipses, both lunar and solar, on any body. You can see the paths that the comets follow, find satellites that we have launched (such as the Cassini spacecraft and the Hubble telescope), and It’s a great way to waste time and get a sense of just how big and small everything is relative to everything else.
Other neat features include:
- Speeding up/slowing down/reversing time
- Traveling out of the solar system to other stars
- Zooming out of the Milky Way
- Have it display reference vectors to show which direction the planet is moving, around what axis it spins, and which way to the Sun
- Have the virtual camera enter a synchronous orbit around the body, or follow one planet in its orbit while continually pointing toward another
Highly recommended.
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