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***************************************************************************
* Celestia *
* *
* A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in *
* three dimensions. *
* *
* Copyright (c) 2001-2009, Celestia Development Team *
* *
*-------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Celestia web site: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ *
* *
* Celestia documentation: *
* http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html *
* Celestia WikiBook: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia *
* *
* Celestia forums: http://www.shatters.net/forum/ *
* *
***************************************************************************
CONTENTS
--------
License
Installing in Unix and Linux
Getting Started
Mouse, Keyboard & Joystick Controls
Star & Solar System Browser
Selecting Objects by Name
Known Issues
User Modifiable Elements
Celestia Resources
Contributions
Acknowledgements
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 AND LINUX
----------------------------
Type "./configure --help" for a list of options. The basic commands are shown
below. For more detailed information, refer to the INSTALL file.
The 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: controls.txt OR use the Help menu to display the Controls
list.
STAR & SOLAR SYSTEM BROWSER
-------------------------------------------
The Navigation menu contains 'Solar System Browser' and 'Star Browser'
options.
STAR BROWSER
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.
SOLAR SYSTEM BROWSER
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.
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 catalog numbers for stars.
Celestia currently supports the HIP, HD and SAO catalogs. Catalog numbers must
be entered with a space between the prefix and the catalog number.
KNOWN ISSUES
------------
For up-to-the-minute answers to some common problems encountered when running
Celestia, please view either the FAQ in the Help menu or take a look at the
"Celestia User's FAQ" located on the Celestia User's Forum:
http://www.shatters.net/forum/
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 easily add real, hypothetical, or fictional objects
by creating new catalog files. It is *not* recommended that you alter the
built-in data files; nearly all desired modifications and additions can be
made by placing new catalog files in Celestia's extras folders. There are three
types of catalog files:
- ssc (solar system catalog: planets, moons, spacecraft, etc.)
- stc (star catalog)
- dsc (deep sky catalog: galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae)
All three types of catalog file are text files that can be updated with your
favorite text editing program.
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 WikiBook:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia
Celestial Matters Website and Forums:
http://www.celestialmatters.org/
http://forum.celestialmatters.org/
Celestia Motherlode:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/
Celestia Source Code (SourceForge.net):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/
Celestia Bug Tracking (SourceForge.net):
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=121302&group_id=21302&func=browse
Celestia Feature Requests (SourceForge.net):
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=371302&group_id=21302&func=browse
CONTRIBUTIONS
-------------
Authors
-------
Chris Laurel <claurel@gmail.com>
Clint Weisbrod <cweisbrod@cogeco.ca>
Fridger Schrempp <t00fri@mail.desy.de>
Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com>
Christophe Teyssier <chris@teyssier.org>
Hank Ramsey <hramsey@users.sourceforge.net>
Grant Hutchison <grant.celestia@xemaps.com>
Pat Suwalski <pat@suwalski.net>
Toti
Da Woon Jung <dirkpitt2050@users.sf.net>
Vincent Giangiulio <vince.gian@free.fr>
Andrew Tribick
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
Nils Larsson .......... Various enhancements and 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
Scientific Data Base
--------------------
# Grant Hutchison
Supplied the correct orientations for the major planets, their moons, and a
number of asteroids and also worked on these data files:
Solarsys.ssc, nearstars.stc, extrasolar.ssc, extrasolar.stc, earth_locs.ssc
# Fridger Schrempp
Complete NGC/IC galaxy database + local group galaxies (galaxies.dsc)
Data base on globular clusters (globulars.dsc)
Data base on visual and spectroscopic binaries (visualbins.stc,
spectbins.stc)
World-capitals.ssc
Asterisms.dat
# Andrew Tribick
Significant update of the star.dat base based on new HIP Reduction of the
Raw data, Floor van Leeuwen, 2007.
CHARM2 stellar radii (charm2.stc)
Texture maps
------------
# 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 bump maps are all from James
Hastings-Trew's collection. His maps may be found here:
http://gw.marketingden.com/planets/planets.html
# Grant Hutchison
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
The Eros map is a shaded relief generated from the NEAR laser rangefinder
shape model at:
http://pdssbn.astro.umd.edu/NEARdb/nlr/#shape
# Jens Meyer
Dione and Rhea are USGS maps colored and modified by Jens Meyer.
The Moon map 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.
# Fridger Schrempp
'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.
Titan's cloud texture in natural colors and its surface map at near-infrared
wavelength. They are based on resources available from the imaging site
(Ciclops) of the Cassini mission
(http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/index.php)
The Phoebe base texture was created from the cylindrical map published by
the Cassini imaging team
(http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07775)
The Tethys textures are based on the Oct 2008 Ciclops map
(http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11116)
The Iapetus texture was created from the Oct 2008 Ciclops map
(http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11116)
The Lunar topography and bump maps, 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/)
The Mercury map was created from a combination of Mariner 10 imaging
with recent MESSENGER WAC images from the first two flybys, as collected
and reprojected by Steve Albers:
See http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html.
# Phil Stooke
Proteus, Janus, Prometheus and Epimetheus maps are from Phil Stooke.
The Ida and Gaspra photomosaic maps are by Phil Stooke.
# Venus's clouds and the textures for Ganymede, Callisto and Saturn are from
Bj<42>rn J<>nsson. His site at http://www.mmedia.is/~bjj/ is an excellent
resource for solar system rendering.
# 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/
# Steve Albers
The Io and Europa maps are by Steve Albers. His planetary maps are at:
http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html
# 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 map is a photomosaic 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.
# The asteroid.jpg texture was created by Paul Roberts.
# The textures for the five classes of extrasolar giant planet were created by
Andrew Tribick.
# CICLOPS
The map of Enceladus is derived from the December 2008 CICLOPS map:
http://ciclops.org/view/5447/Map_of_Enceladus_December_2008
3D Models
---------
# 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/
# The 3D model of ISS is a deconstruction of Andrew Farnaby's
complete ISS model with textures by Bob Hundley. The model
represents the ISS as of June 2008 and is a modification of
the model that can be found here:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_addon_details.php?addon_id=1199
ISS model of June 2008 (with Kibo) by krisci3 (modified and
converted in order to work with JPG by Ulrich Dickmann, a.k.a.
Adirondack)
# 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 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
Libraries
---------
# 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.
# Many cylindrical projections of photographs were performed by Fridger
Schrempp with Matthew Arcus 'mmps' software,
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~arcus/mmps/
# The lower resolution textures were all converted from their higher resolution
versions using Gimp.
# 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
Other work
----------
# 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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
----------------
A very big thank you for creating Celestia goes to Chris Laurel who started this
program in the year 2001.
<claurel@gmail.com>
http://www.shatters.net/~claurel/
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Special thanks go to all Celestia users who submit bug reports, suggestions, and
fixes. Celestia wouldn't be the program it is today, without their help.
The Celestia Development Team
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