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20 KiB
Plaintext
505 lines
20 KiB
Plaintext
***************************************************************************
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* Celestia *
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* *
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* A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in *
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* three dimensions. *
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* *
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* Copyright (c) 2001-2008, Celestia Development Team *
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* *
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*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
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* Celestia web site: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ *
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* *
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* Celestia documentation: *
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* http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html *
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* Celestia WikiBook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia *
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* *
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* Celestia forums: http://www.shatters.net/forum/ *
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* *
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***************************************************************************
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CONTENTS
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--------
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License
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Installing in Unix
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Getting Started
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Mouse, Keyboard & Joystick Controls
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Solar System Browser
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Star Browser
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Selecting Objects by Name
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Known Issues
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User Modifiable Elements
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Celestia Resources
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Credits
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LICENSE
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-------
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This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
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the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
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Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
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version.
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This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
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ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS
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FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more
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details, which you should have received along with this program (filename:
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COPYING). If not, request a copy from:
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Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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59 Temple Place - Suite 330
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Boston, MA 02111-1307
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USA
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INSTALLING IN UNIX
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------------------
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Type "./configure --help" for a list of options. The basic commands are shown
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below. For more detailed information, refer to the INSTALL file.
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This GTK version is built with...
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./configure --with-gtk
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make
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make install
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The KDE3 version is built with...
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./configure --with-kde
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make
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make install
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Note: some systems may require configure to be executed with
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--with-qt-includes=/usr/include/qt3
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The Gnome version is built with...
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./configure --with-gnome
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make
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make install
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If all else fails, try the gui-less version with...
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./configure --with-glut
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make
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make install
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GETTING STARTED
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---------------
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Celestia will start up in a window, and if everything is working correctly,
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you'll see Earth in front of a field of stars. Displayed on-screen, is some
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information about your target (Earth), your speed, and the current time
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(Universal Time, so it'll probably be a few hours off from your computer's
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clock).
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Right drag the mouse to orbit Earth and you might see the Moon and some
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familiar constellations. Left dragging the mouse changes your orientation
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also, but the camera rotates about its center instead of rotating around
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Earth. Rolling the mouse wheel will change your distance to Earth--you can
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move light years away, then roll the wheel in the opposite direction to get
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back to your starting location. If your mouse lacks a wheel, you can use the
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Home and End keys instead.
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When running Celestia, you will usually have some object selected. Currently,
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it's Earth, but it could also be a star, moon, spacecraft, galaxy, or some
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other object. The simplest way to select an object is to click on it. Try
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clicking on a star to select it. The information about Earth is replaced with
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some details about the star. Press G (or use the Navigation menu), and you'll
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zoom through space toward the selected star. If you press G again, you'll
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approach the star even closer.
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Press H to select our Sun, and then G to go back to our Sun. Right click on
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the sun to bring up a menu of planets and other objects in the solar system.
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After selecting a planet from the menu, hit G again to travel toward it. Once
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there, hold down the right mouse button and drag to orbit the planet.
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The Tour Guide is a list of some of the more interesting objects you can visit
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in Celestia. Select the Tour Guide option in the Navigation menu to display
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the Tour Guide window. Choose a destination from the list, click the Goto
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button, and you're off.
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That covers the very basics. For a more in-depth look at Celestia and the
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controls available to you, download the "Celestia User's Guide" (written by
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Frank Gregorio), available in several languages, from:
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http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
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This web page also includes links to the Celestia README file translated into
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Japanese.
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MOUSE, KEYBOARD & JOYSTICK CONTROLS
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-----------------------------------
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See the included file: KbdMouseJoyControls.txt. In Windows, you can also use
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the Help menu to display the Controls list.
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SOLAR SYSTEM BROWSER
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-------------------------------------------
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The Navigation menu contains 'Solar System Browser' and 'Star Browser'
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options. The Solar System Browser displays a window with a tree view of all
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the objects in the nearest solar system (if there is one within a light year
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of your current position.) Clicking on the name of any object in the window
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will select it. You can then use the Center or Go To buttons to display that
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object in the main Celestia window.
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STAR BROWSER
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-----------------------------------
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By default, the Star Browser window displays a table of the 100 nearest stars,
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along with their Distance, Apparent and Absolute Magnitude, and Type. Clicking
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on the column headers will sort the stars. The table is not continuously
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updated, so if you travel to another star, you should press the Refresh button
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to update the table for your current position. The radio buttons beneath the
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table let you switch between viewing a list of Nearest, Brightest, or 'With
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planets' stars. As with the solar system browser, clicking on any star name
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in the table will select it. Use this feature along with the Center and Go
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To buttons to tour the stars visible from any night sky in the galaxy.
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SELECTING OBJECTS BY NAME
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-------------------------
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Celestia provides several ways to select an object by name...
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1. Choose 'Select Object' from the Navigation menu, type in the object
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name, and click OK.
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2. Press Enter, type in the entire object name, and press Enter again.
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3. Press Enter, type in the first few characters of the object name,
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press the Tab key to move through the displayed listing until the
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object is highlighted, then press Enter again.
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You can use common names, Bayer designations, or HD catalog numbers for
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stars. HD catalog numbers must be entered with a space between HD and the
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number. Celestia handles star catalog numbers in a slightly kludgy way, to
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keep the star database size to minimum -- only one catalog number is stored.
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Normally, this will be a number from the HD catalog, but if a star isn't in
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the HD catalog the number from another catalog will be used instead.
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Currently, the secondary catalog is always the HIPPARCOS data set, for which
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the prefix "HIP" should be used.
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KNOWN ISSUES
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------------
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Many people have reported problems running Celestia with Matrox G400/G450 3D
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accelerator cards. As I don't have a Matrox card, I haven't made much
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progress on this bug. If you do have a G400, have Visual C++ installed, and
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would be interested in testing a debug version of Celestia, please contact me.
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The maximum texture size supported by the Voodoo 1/2/3 is 256x256, so many of
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the planet textures will look blurry when running Celestia on one of these
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cards.
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On 3D accelerator cards with a limited amount of memory, resizing the main
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Celestia window can cause textures to disappear. This occurs because so much
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memory is required for the frame buffer that there's not enough left for
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textures. There are a several workarounds:
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- Use a smaller window
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- Make sure your display is set to 16-bit (high color) mode
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- Try running Celestia in full screen mode
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Celestia only barely works in 256 color mode. If your display is set to 256
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colors, change it to 16-bit or 32-bit if at all possible.
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If objects look good at a distance but get too dark when you approach them
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closely, your OpenGL driver does not support a required extension. Try
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upgrading to the most current version of drivers available for your card. For
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some older cards, this still won't fix the problem. The next version of
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Celestia will feature a workaround.
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For up-to-the-minute answers to some common problems encountered when running
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Celestia, please view the "preliminary Celestia User's FAQ" located on the
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Celestia User's Forum:
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http://www.shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2291
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USER MODIFIABLE ELEMENTS
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------------------------
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You can modify how Celestia starts up each time you run it, by defining your
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own start-up settings. Simply open the file "start.cel" in a plain text
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editor and follow the in-file instructions. Also, view the celestia.cfg file
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in a plain text editor to see additional settings.
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Celestia allows you to easily add real, hypothetical, or fictional objects
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by creating new catalog files. It is *not* recommended that you alter the
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built-in data files; nearly all desired modifications and additions can be
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made by placing new catalog files in Celestia's extras folders. There are three
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types of catalog files:
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- ssc (solar system catalog: planets, moons, spacecraft, etc.)
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- stc (star catalog)
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- dsc (deep sky catalog: galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae)
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All three types of catalog file are text files that can be updated with your
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favorite text editing program.
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The units used for the solar system data may not be obvious. All angle fields
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in the catalog are in degrees. For planets, the period is specified in earth
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years, and the semi-major axis in AU; for satellites, days and kilometers are
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used instead.
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When adding objects, they should be included in their own sub-directory under
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Celestia's "extras" directory. For example:
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celestia <dir>
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extras <dir>
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yourNewObject <dir>
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about.txt
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install.txt
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object.dsc
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object.ssc
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object.stc
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models <dir>
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object.3ds
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object.cmod
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object.cms
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textures <dir>
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medres <dir>
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objectTexture.??? (jpg, png, dds, or bmp)
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YOU create each of the directories under the extras directory. By using this
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structure, activating and de-activating your new objects will be easy. Simply
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move the sub-directory "yourNewObject" outside of the extras directory. Some
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users have found that adding category-name sub-directories under extras to be
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useful, such as:
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celestia
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extras
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Deep Sky Objects
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yourNewObject
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Galaxies
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yourNewObject
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Spacecraft
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yourNewObject
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Texture files should be placed in textures/medres, as shown above. Currently,
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JPEG, PNG, BMP, and DDS are the only formats supported.
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Models belong in the models directory. Celestia can read 3DS models, and two
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custom formats (.cms and .cmod). The .cms files are currently used for rough
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fractal displacement map likenesses of asteroids and small moons. 3DS meshes
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are normalized to fit within a unit cube -- the Radius field determines how
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big they appear within Celestia.
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Most of the stars in Celestia are defined in the binary file stars.dat.
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The binary format is used instead of a text stc file because it's more
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compact and faster to load; the size and speed advantages of a binary file
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are significant with the over 100,000 stars in the Celestia. Stars.dat was
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generated from the HIPPARCOS data set. Revisions and additions to the
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HIPPARCOS data set appear in the stc files revised.stc, nearstars.stc,
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visbins.stc (visual binary stars), and spectbins.stc (spectroscopic binary
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stars.)
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There are two very helpful resources with much more detailed information
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about creating add-ons for Celestia:
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Selden's "Introduction to Celestia Add-ons" web page:
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http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/addon-intro.html
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The catalog file reference on the Celestia Wikibook:
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http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/Catalog_File_Reference
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CELESTIA RESOURCES
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------------------
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Celestia Web Site:
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http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
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Celestia Source Repository (SourceForge.net):
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/
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Celestia User Forums:
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http://www.shatters.net/forum/
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Selden's List of Resources for Celestia :
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http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/
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Celestial Matters Website and Forums:
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http://www.celestialmatters.org/
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http://forum.celestialmatters.org/
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Celestia Developer Center
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http://celestia.teyssier.org/
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Celestia for Gnome
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http://pat.suwalski.net/celestia/
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CREDITS
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-------
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Authors
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-------
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See the AUTHORS file
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Contributors
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------------
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Deon Ramsey ........... original GTK1 interface
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Christopher ANDRE ..... Eclipse Finder
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Colin Walters ......... Endianness fixes
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Peter Chapman ......... Orbit path rendering changes
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James Holmes ..........
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Harald Schmidt ........ Lua scripting enhancements, bug fixes
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Documentation
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-------------
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Frank Gregorio ........ Celestia User's Guide
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Hitoshi Suzuki ........ Japanese README translation
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Christophe Teyssier ... DocBook and HTML conversion of User's Guide
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Diego Rodriguez ....... Acrobat conversion of User's Guide
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Don Goyette ........... CEL Scripting Guide
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Harald Schmidt ........ Celx/Lua Scripting Guide
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Other Contributors
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------------------
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Models of Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey were created by Shrox:
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http://www.shrox.com/
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The Cassini and Huygens models are by Jack Higgins:
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http://homepage.eircom.net/~jackcelestia/
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Most of the planet maps are from David Seal's site:
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http://maps.jpl.nasa.gov/.
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A few of these maps were modified by me, with fictional terrain added to fill
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in gaps. The model of the Galileo spacecraft is also from David Seal's site
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(though it was converted from Inventor to 3DS format.)
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The Mars, Neptune, and Uranus textures and Mars, Moon and Mercury bump maps are
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all from James Hastings-Trew's collection, and the Mercury texture is a recolored
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version of his. Some of the prettiest planet maps around are at:
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http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html
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Fridger Schrempp produced the 'available data' Pluto and Charon textures using
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maps created by Marc Buie at Lowell Observatory. Buie's maps were generated
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from photometric data gathered during six years of mutual occultations of
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Pluto and Charon.
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Venus's clouds and the textures for Ganymede, Callisto and Saturn are from
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Bj<EFBFBD>n J<>sson. His site at http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/ is an excellent
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resource for solar system rendering.
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The Io and Europa maps are by Steve Albers. His planetary maps are at:
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http://laps.fsl.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html
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Saturn's rings were built by Grant Hutchison from Cassini imaging, with
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transparency information derived from stellar transit data obtained from:
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http://pds-rings.arc.nasa.gov/ringocc/ringocc.html
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Titan's cloud texture in natural colors and its surface map at
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near-infrared wavelength were created by Fridger Schrempp. They are
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based on resources available from the imaging site (Ciclops) of the
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Cassini mission,
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http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php
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The texture of Iapetus was created by Fridger Schrempp, using all available
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imaging resources both from the Voyager mission and the recent Cassini fly-bys
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from
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov
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Many cylindrical projections of photographs were performed by Fridger
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Schrempp with Matthew Arcus 'mmps' software,
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http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/
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Venus's surface is a copyright-free NASA image, prepared from Magellan radar
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data. The original is available at
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http://www.solarviews.com/cap/venus/venmap.htm
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The Earth texture was created by NASA using data from the MODIS instrument
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aboard the Terra satellite. Further information is available from:
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http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/BlueMarble/
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The textures for the Uranian satellites were created by Ivan Rivera from JPL
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data. His Celestia page is: http://bruckner.homelinux.net/celestia.html
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The Hyperion and Enceladus maps are photomosaics assembled by Phil Stooke and
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colored by Jens Meyer.
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Amalthea is a shaded relief map by Phil Stooke, colored by Wm. Robert Johnston
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(http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/spaceart/cylmaps.html), and further modified
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by Jens Meyer and Grant Hutchison.
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Proteus, Janus, Prometheus and Epimetheus maps are by Phil Stooke.
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Dione and Rhea are USGS maps colored and modified by Jens Meyer.
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Tethys is a USGS map colored and modified by Grant Hutchison.
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The Moon map by Jens Meyer is based on data from PDS Map-A-Planet at
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http://pdsmaps.wr.usgs.gov/maps.html with colors from Mark Robinson at
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http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/research/robinson/MOON/clem_color.html.
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The Ida and Gaspra photomosaic maps are by Phil Stooke.
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The Eros map is a shaded relief generated by Grant Hutchison from the NEAR
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laser rangefinder shape model at:
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http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/NEARdb/nlr/#shape
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The asteroid.jpg texture was created by Paul Roberts.
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The textures for the five classes of extrasolar giant planet were created by
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Andrew Tribick.
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The lower resolution textures were all converted from their higher resolution
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versions using Gimp.
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3D asteroid models of Toutatis, Kleopatra, Geographos, 1998 KY26, Bacchus,
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Castalia and Golevka are courtesy of Scott Hudson, Washington State
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University. His site is:
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http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~hudson/Research/Asteroids/models.html
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3D models of Phobos, Deimos, Amalthea, Janus, Epimetheus, Prometheus, Pandora,
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Hyperion, Larissa, Proteus, Vesta, Ida, Gaspra and Halley are derived from
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Phil Stooke's Cartography of Non-Spherical Worlds at:
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http://publish.uwo.ca/~pjstooke/plancart.htm
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and optical shape model dataset at:
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http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/SBNast/holdings/EAR-A-5-DDR-STOOKE-SHAPE-MODELS-
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V1.0.html
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The 3D model of Eros was prepared from the NEAR laser rangefinder shape model
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at: http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/NEARdb/nlr/#shape
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The Phoebe base texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from
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the cylindrical map recently published by the Cassini imaging team,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07775
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The Phoebe mesh was designed by Jerry Gardner aka Jestr, jestr@ntlworld.com,
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based on Phoebe's bumpy topography display from Cassini,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06070
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The Tethys texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07781
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merged with reprojected images from earlier Voyager missions. It was
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color-mapped by computer, using the natural color template,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06140
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The Iapetus texture was created by Fridger Schrempp from recent Cassini imaging,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07778
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merged with reprojected images from earlier Voyager missions. It was
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color-mapped by computer, using the near true-color template,
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http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06167
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Fridger Schrempp created the Lunar topography map, using Clementine laser altimeter
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data, merged in the polar regions with topographic data from Clementine 750 nm
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oblique and nadir images,
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ftp://ftpflag.wr.usgs.gov/dist/pigpen/moon/usgs/topo/global/
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|
||
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.
|
||
|
||
Some versions of Celestia may use the SPICE system for spacecraft and planetary
|
||
information, developed by Caltech/JPL under contract to NASA.
|
||
|
||
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@gmail.com>
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/
|
||
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
|