497 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
497 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
***************************************************************************
|
||
* Celestia *
|
||
* *
|
||
* A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in *
|
||
* three dimensions. *
|
||
* *
|
||
* Copyright (c)2001-2006, Chris Laurel *
|
||
* <claurel@shatters.net> *
|
||
* *
|
||
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
|
||
* Celestia web site: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ *
|
||
* *
|
||
* Celestia documentation: *
|
||
* http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html *
|
||
* *
|
||
* Celestia forums: http://www.shatters.net/forum/ *
|
||
***************************************************************************
|
||
|
||
CONTENTS
|
||
--------
|
||
License
|
||
Installing in Unix
|
||
Getting Started
|
||
Mouse, Keyboard & Joystick Controls
|
||
Solar System Browser
|
||
Star Browser
|
||
Selecting Objects by Name
|
||
Known Issues
|
||
User Modifiable Elements
|
||
Celestia Resources
|
||
Credits
|
||
|
||
|
||
LICENSE
|
||
-------
|
||
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
|
||
the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
|
||
Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
|
||
version.
|
||
|
||
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
|
||
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
|
||
FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
|
||
details, which you should have received along with this program (filename:
|
||
COPYING). If not, request a copy from:
|
||
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
|
||
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
|
||
Boston, MA 02111-1307
|
||
USA
|
||
|
||
|
||
INSTALLING IN UNIX
|
||
------------------
|
||
Type "./configure --help" for a list of options. The basic commands are shown
|
||
below. For more detailed information, refer to the INSTALL file.
|
||
|
||
This GTK version is built with...
|
||
./configure --with-gtk
|
||
make
|
||
make install
|
||
|
||
The KDE3 version is built with...
|
||
./configure --with-kde
|
||
make
|
||
make install
|
||
|
||
Note: some systems may require configure to be executed with
|
||
--with-qt-includes=/usr/include/qt3
|
||
|
||
The Gnome version is built with...
|
||
./configure --with-gnome
|
||
make
|
||
make install
|
||
|
||
If all else fails, try the gui-less version with...
|
||
./configure --with-glut
|
||
make
|
||
make install
|
||
|
||
|
||
GETTING STARTED
|
||
---------------
|
||
Celestia will start up in a window, and if everything is working correctly,
|
||
you'll see Earth in front of a field of stars. Displayed on-screen, is some
|
||
information about your target (Earth), your speed, and the current time
|
||
(Universal Time, so it'll probably be a few hours off from your computer's
|
||
clock).
|
||
|
||
Right drag the mouse to orbit Earth and you might see the Moon and some
|
||
familiar constellations. Left dragging the mouse changes your orientation
|
||
also, but the camera rotates about its center instead of rotating around
|
||
Earth. Rolling the mouse wheel will change your distance to Earth--you can
|
||
move light years away, then roll the wheel in the opposite direction to get
|
||
back to your starting location. If your mouse lacks a wheel, you can use the
|
||
Home and End keys instead.
|
||
|
||
When running Celestia, you will usually have some object selected. Currently,
|
||
it's Earth, but it could also be a star, moon, spacecraft, galaxy, or some
|
||
other object. The simplest way to select an object is to click on it. Try
|
||
clicking on a star to select it. The information about Earth is replaced with
|
||
some details about the star. Press G (or use the Navigation menu), and you'll
|
||
zoom through space toward the selected star. If you press G again, you'll
|
||
approach the star even closer.
|
||
|
||
Press H to select our Sun, and then G to go back to our Sun. Right click on
|
||
the sun to bring up a menu of planets and other objects in the solar system.
|
||
After selecting a planet from the menu, hit G again to travel toward it. Once
|
||
there, hold down the right mouse button and drag to orbit the planet.
|
||
|
||
The Tour Guide is a list of some of the more interesting objects you can visit
|
||
in Celestia. Select the Tour Guide option in the Navigation menu to display
|
||
the Tour Guide window. Choose a destination from the list, click the Goto
|
||
button, and you're off.
|
||
|
||
That covers the very basics. For a more in-depth look at Celestia and the
|
||
controls available to you, download the "Celestia User's Guide" (written by
|
||
Frank Gregorio), available in several languages, from:
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
|
||
This web page also includes links to the Celestia README file translated into
|
||
Japanese.
|
||
|
||
|
||
MOUSE, KEYBOARD & JOYSTICK CONTROLS
|
||
-----------------------------------
|
||
See the included file: KbdMouseJoyControls.txt. In Windows, you can also use
|
||
the Help menu to display the Controls list.
|
||
|
||
|
||
SOLAR SYSTEM BROWSER (Windows version only)
|
||
-------------------------------------------
|
||
The Navigation menu contains 'Solar System Browser' and 'Star Browser'
|
||
options. The Solar System Browser displays a window with a tree view of all
|
||
the objects in the nearest solar system (if there is one within a light year
|
||
of your current position.) Clicking on the name of any object in the window
|
||
will select it. You can then use the Center or Go To buttons to display that
|
||
object in the main Celestia window.
|
||
|
||
|
||
STAR BROWSER (Windows version only)
|
||
-----------------------------------
|
||
By default, the Star Browser window displays a table of the 100 nearest stars,
|
||
along with their Distance, Apparent and Absolute Magnitude, and Type. Clicking
|
||
on the column headers will sort the stars. The table is not continuously
|
||
updated, so if you travel to another star, you should press the Refresh button
|
||
to update the table for your current position. The radio buttons beneath the
|
||
table let you switch between viewing a list of Nearest, Brightest, or 'With
|
||
planets' stars. As with the solar system browser, clicking on any star name
|
||
in the table will select it. Use this feature along with the Center and Go
|
||
To buttons to tour the stars visible from any night sky in the galaxy.
|
||
|
||
|
||
SELECTING OBJECTS BY NAME
|
||
-------------------------
|
||
Celestia provides several ways to select an object by name...
|
||
1. Choose 'Select Object' from the Navigation menu, type in the object
|
||
name, and click OK.
|
||
|
||
2. Press Enter, type in the entire object name, and press Enter again.
|
||
|
||
3. Press Enter, type in the first few characters of the object name,
|
||
press the Tab key to move through the displayed listing until the
|
||
object is highlighted, then press Enter again.
|
||
|
||
You can use common names, Bayer designations, or HD catalog numbers for
|
||
stars. HD catalog numbers must be entered with a space between HD and the
|
||
number. Celestia handles star catalog numbers in a slightly kludgy way, to
|
||
keep the star database size to minimum -- only one catalog number is stored.
|
||
Normally, this will be a number from the HD catalog, but if a star isn't in
|
||
the HD catalog the number from another catalog will be used instead.
|
||
Currently, the secondary catalog is always the HIPPARCOS data set, for which
|
||
the prefix "HIP" should be used.
|
||
|
||
|
||
KNOWN ISSUES
|
||
------------
|
||
Many people have reported problems running Celestia with Matrox G400/G450 3D
|
||
accelerator cards. As I don't have a Matrox card, I haven't made much
|
||
progress on this bug. If you do have a G400, have Visual C++ installed, and
|
||
would be interested in testing a debug version of Celestia, please contact me.
|
||
|
||
The maximum texture size supported by the Voodoo 1/2/3 is 256x256, so many of
|
||
the planet textures will look blurry when running Celestia on one of these
|
||
cards.
|
||
|
||
On 3D accelerator cards with a limited amount of memory, resizing the main
|
||
Celestia window can cause textures to disappear. This occurs because so much
|
||
memory is required for the frame buffer that there's not enough left for
|
||
textures. There are a several workarounds:
|
||
- Use a smaller window
|
||
- Make sure your display is set to 16-bit (high color) mode
|
||
- Try running Celestia in full screen mode
|
||
|
||
Celestia only barely works in 256 color mode. If your display is set to 256
|
||
colors, change it to 16-bit or 32-bit if at all possible.
|
||
|
||
If objects look good at a distance but get too dark when you approach them
|
||
closely, your OpenGL driver does not support a required extension. Try
|
||
upgrading to the most current version of drivers available for your card. For
|
||
some older cards, this still won't fix the problem. The next version of
|
||
Celestia will feature a workaround.
|
||
|
||
For up-to-the-minute answers to some common problems encountered when running
|
||
Celestia, please view the "preliminary Celestia User's FAQ" located on the
|
||
Celestia User's Forum:
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2291
|
||
|
||
|
||
USER MODIFIABLE ELEMENTS
|
||
------------------------
|
||
You can modify how Celestia starts up each time you run it, by defining your
|
||
own start-up settings. Simply open the file "start.cel" in a plain text
|
||
editor and follow the in-file instructions. Also, view the celestia.cfg file
|
||
in a plain text editor to see additional settings.
|
||
|
||
Celestia allows you to create an entirely fictional universe, by modifying its
|
||
solarsys.ssc, stars.dat, and hdnames.dat files. The easiest file to modify is
|
||
the solar system catalog (solarsys.ssc), since it's a plain text file and the
|
||
format is very text-editor friendly. It's also quite verbose, but that's not
|
||
a problem yet.
|
||
|
||
The units used for the solar system data may not be obvious. All angle fields
|
||
in the catalog are in degrees. For planets, the period is specified in earth
|
||
years, and the semi-major axis in AU; for satellites, days and kilometers are
|
||
used instead.
|
||
|
||
When adding objects, they should be included in their own sub-directory under
|
||
Celestia's "extras" directory. For example:
|
||
celestia <dir>
|
||
extras <dir>
|
||
yourNewObject <dir>
|
||
about.txt
|
||
install.txt
|
||
object.dsc
|
||
object.ssc
|
||
object.stc
|
||
models <dir>
|
||
object.3ds
|
||
object.cmod
|
||
object.cms
|
||
textures <dir>
|
||
medres <dir>
|
||
objectTexture.??? (jpg, png, dds, or bmp)
|
||
|
||
YOU create each of the directories under the extras directory. By using this
|
||
structure, activating and de-activating your new objects will be easy. Simply
|
||
move the sub-directory "yourNewObject" outside of the extras directory. Some
|
||
users have found that adding category-name sub-directories under extras to be
|
||
useful, such as:
|
||
celestia
|
||
extras
|
||
Deep Sky Objects
|
||
yourNewObject
|
||
Galaxies
|
||
yourNewObject
|
||
Spacecraft
|
||
yourNewObject
|
||
|
||
Texture files should be placed in textures/medres, as shown above. Currently,
|
||
JPEG, PNG, BMP, and DDS are the only formats supported.
|
||
|
||
Models belong in the models directory. Celestia can read 3DS models, and two
|
||
custom formats (.cms and .cmod). The .cms files are currently used for rough
|
||
fractal displacement map likenesses of asteroids and small moons. 3DS meshes
|
||
are normalized to fit within a unit cube -- the Radius field determines how
|
||
big they appear within Celestia.
|
||
|
||
The stars.dat file is a binary database of stars, processed from the 50+ meg
|
||
HIPPARCOS data set. The first four bytes are an integer (int) value
|
||
containing the number of stars in the database. Following that are a bunch of
|
||
records of this form:
|
||
4 byte int : catalog number
|
||
4 byte float : right ascension
|
||
4 byte float : declination
|
||
4 byte float : parallax
|
||
2 byte int : apparent magnitude
|
||
2 byte int : stellar class
|
||
1 byte : parallax error
|
||
|
||
RA, declination, and parallax are converted to x, y, z coordinates, and
|
||
apparent magnitude is converted to absolute magnitude when the database is
|
||
read.
|
||
|
||
For more detailed information about creating add-ons for Celestia, please
|
||
visit Selden's "Introduction to Celestia Add-ons" web page at:
|
||
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/addon-intro.html
|
||
|
||
|
||
CELESTIA RESOURCES
|
||
------------------
|
||
Celestia Web Site:
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
|
||
|
||
Celestia User Forums:
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/forum/
|
||
|
||
Selden's List of Resources for Celestia :
|
||
http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/
|
||
|
||
Celestia Developer Center
|
||
http://celestia.teyssier.org/
|
||
|
||
Celestia for Gnome
|
||
http://pat.suwalski.net/celestia/
|
||
|
||
Celestia Source Code (SourceForge.net):
|
||
http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/
|
||
|
||
|
||
CREDITS
|
||
-------
|
||
|
||
Authors
|
||
-------
|
||
See the AUTHORS file
|
||
|
||
Contributors
|
||
------------
|
||
Deon Ramsey ........... original GTK1 interface
|
||
Christopher ANDRE ..... Eclipse Finder
|
||
Colin Walters ......... Endianness fixes
|
||
Peter Chapman ......... Orbit path rendering changes
|
||
James Holmes ..........
|
||
Harald Schmidt ........ Lua scripting enhancements, bug fixes
|
||
|
||
Documentation
|
||
-------------
|
||
Frank Gregorio ........ Celestia User's Guide
|
||
Hitoshi Suzuki ........ Japanese README translation
|
||
Christophe Teyssier ... DocBook and HTML conversion of User's Guide
|
||
Diego Rodriguez ....... Acrobat conversion of User's Guide
|
||
Don Goyette ........... CEL Scripting Guide
|
||
Harald Schmidt ........ Celx/Lua Scripting Guide
|
||
|
||
|
||
Other Contributors
|
||
------------------
|
||
Models of Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey were created by Shrox:
|
||
http://www.shrox.com/
|
||
The Cassini and Huygens models are by Jack Higgins:
|
||
http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/
|
||
|
||
Most of the planet maps are from David Seal's site:
|
||
http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/.
|
||
A few of these maps were modified by me, with fictional terrain added to fill
|
||
in gaps. The model of the Galileo spacecraft is also from David Seal's site
|
||
(though it was converted from Inventor to 3DS format.)
|
||
|
||
The Mars, Neptune, and Uranus textures and Mars, Moon and Mercury bump maps are
|
||
all from James Hastings-Trew's collection, and the Mercury texture is a recolored
|
||
version of his. Some of the prettiest planet maps around are at:
|
||
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html
|
||
|
||
Fridger Schrempp produced the 'available data' Pluto and Charon textures using
|
||
maps created by Marc Buie at Lowell Observatory. Buie's maps were generated
|
||
from photometric data gathered during six years of mutual occultations of
|
||
Pluto and Charon.
|
||
|
||
Venus's clouds and the textures for Ganymede, Callisto and Saturn are from
|
||
Bj<EFBFBD>n J<>sson. His site at http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/ is an excellent
|
||
resource for solar system rendering.
|
||
|
||
The Io and Europa maps are by Steve Albers. His planetary maps are at:
|
||
http://laps.fsl.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html
|
||
|
||
Saturn's rings were built by Grant Hutchison from Cassini imaging, with
|
||
transparency information derived from stellar transit data obtained from:
|
||
http://pds-rings.arc.nasa.gov/ringocc/ringocc.html
|
||
|
||
Titan's cloud texture in natural colors and its surface map at
|
||
near-infrared wavelength were created by Fridger Schrempp. They are
|
||
based on resources available from the imaging site (Ciclops) of the
|
||
Cassini mission,
|
||
http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php
|
||
|
||
The texture of Iapetus was created by Fridger Schrempp, using all available
|
||
imaging resources both from the Voyager mission and the recent Cassini fly-bys
|
||
from
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
|
||
|
||
Many cylindrical projections of photographs were performed by Fridger
|
||
Schrempp with Matthew Arcus 'mmps' software,
|
||
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/
|
||
|
||
Venus's surface is a copyright-free NASA image, prepared from Magellan radar
|
||
data. The original is available at
|
||
http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venmap.htm
|
||
|
||
The Earth texture was created by NASA using data from the MODIS instrument
|
||
aboard the Terra satellite. Further information is available from:
|
||
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
|
||
|
||
The textures for the Uranian satellites were created by Ivan Rivera from JPL
|
||
data. His Celestia page is: http://bruckner.homelinux.net/celestia.html
|
||
|
||
The Hyperion and Enceladus maps are photomosaics assembled by Phil Stooke and
|
||
colored by Jens Meyer.
|
||
|
||
Amalthea is a shaded relief map by Phil Stooke, colored by Wm. Robert Johnston
|
||
(http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/spaceart/cylmaps.html), and further modified
|
||
by Jens Meyer and Grant Hutchison.
|
||
|
||
Proteus, Janus, Prometheus and Epimetheus maps are by Phil Stooke.
|
||
|
||
Dione and Rhea are USGS maps colored and modified by Jens Meyer.
|
||
|
||
Tethys is a USGS map colored and modified by Grant Hutchison.
|
||
|
||
The Moon map by Jens Meyer is based on data from PDS Map-A-Planet at
|
||
http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html with colors from Mark Robinson at
|
||
http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/research/robinson/MOON/clem_color.html.
|
||
|
||
The Ida and Gaspra photomosaic maps are by Phil Stooke.
|
||
|
||
The Eros map is a shaded relief generated by Grant Hutchison from the NEAR
|
||
laser rangefinder shape model at:
|
||
http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/NEARdb/nlr/#shape
|
||
|
||
The asteroid.jpg texture was created by Paul Roberts.
|
||
|
||
The textures for the five classes of extrasolar giant planet were created by
|
||
Andrew Tribick.
|
||
|
||
The lower resolution textures were all converted from their higher resolution
|
||
versions using Gimp.
|
||
|
||
3D asteroid models of Toutatis, Kleopatra, Geographos, 1998 KY26, Bacchus,
|
||
Castalia and Golevka are courtesy of Scott Hudson, Washington State
|
||
University. His site is:
|
||
http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~hudson/Research/Asteroids/models.html
|
||
|
||
3D models of Phobos, Deimos, Amalthea, Janus, Epimetheus, Prometheus, Pandora,
|
||
Hyperion, Larissa, Proteus, Vesta, Ida, Gaspra and Halley are derived from
|
||
Phil Stooke's Cartography of Non-Spherical Worlds at:
|
||
http://publish.uwo.ca/~pjstooke/plancart.htm
|
||
and optical shape model dataset at:
|
||
|
||
http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/SBNast/holdings/EAR-A-5-DDR-STOOKE-SHAPE-MODELS-
|
||
V1.0.html
|
||
|
||
The 3D model of Eros was prepared from the NEAR laser rangefinder shape model
|
||
at: http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/NEARdb/nlr/#shape
|
||
|
||
The Phoebe base texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from
|
||
the cylindrical map recently published by the Cassini imaging team,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07775
|
||
|
||
The Phoebe mesh was designed by Jerry Gardner aka Jestr, jestr@ntlworld.com,
|
||
based on Phoebe's bumpy topography display from Cassini,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06070
|
||
|
||
The Tethys texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07781
|
||
merged with reprojected images from earlier Voyager missions. It was
|
||
color-mapped by computer, using the natural color template,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06140
|
||
|
||
The Iapetus texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07778
|
||
merged with reprojected images from earlier Voyager missions. It was
|
||
color-mapped by computer, using the near true-color template,
|
||
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06167
|
||
|
||
Fridger Schrempp created the Lunar topography map, using Clementine laser altimeter
|
||
data, merged in the polar regions with topographic data from Clementine 750 nm
|
||
oblique and nadir images,
|
||
ftp://ftpflag.wr.usgs.gov/dist/pigpen/moon/usgs/topo/global/
|
||
|
||
Grant Hutchison supplied the correct orientations for the major planets, their
|
||
moons, and a number of asteroids.
|
||
|
||
Selden Ball deserves a special mention for suffering more prerelease versions
|
||
finding more bugs, and giving more feedback than anyone else.
|
||
|
||
Christophe Campos aka ElChristou created the splash screen for Celestia.
|
||
|
||
The MacOS X icon was designed by Chris Alford: http://www.chrisalford.com/
|
||
|
||
The txf font format used by Celestia was devised by Mark Kilgard.
|
||
|
||
The star database (stars.dat) was derived from the ESA's HIPPARCOS data set.
|
||
|
||
Constellation boundaries are drawn from Davenhall & Leggett's "Catalogue of
|
||
Constellation Boundary Data":
|
||
http://cdsweb.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/ftp-index?/ftp/cats/VI/49
|
||
|
||
This software is based in part on the work of the Independent JPEG Group.
|
||
|
||
A special thank you goes to all Celestia users who submit bug reports,
|
||
suggestions, and fixes. Celestia wouldn't be the program it is today, without
|
||
your help.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Chris Laurel
|
||
<claurel@shatters.net>
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
|