Charles and Christy’s Weblog

I’ve used some pretty cool astronomy software in the past, namely Starry Night Pro. The other day, I stumbled on to Celestia (GPL) and was immediately impressed.

This little program is all OpenGL. While its initial run right after download may seem “eh - ok” this puppy starts singing once you begin playing with various add-on features contributed by the user community.

Here’s my usage and add-on recommendations:

1. Grab the Earth Location File and plunk it in the extras folder.
2. Fire up the program. Run the demo from the Help menu to get a sense of its capabilities.
3. Run this tutorial script to try out some additional controls.
4. Turn on Label Features under Render -> Location. Find your hometown by rotating and zooming in.
5. In the Navigation menu, click Goto Object... and type your hometown as Earth/[hometown] as in Earth/Carrboro.
6. Rotate the Earth until you are more-or-less normal to your hometown.
7. Follow the directions to setup the “backyard planetarium” to simulate your view outside. (With the locations database add-on, you shouldn’t have to lookup your hometown’s coordinates.)
8. Add a bookmark for your current view in the Bookmarks menu.
9. To make the Earth look incredible, download a series of add-ons. They can be pretty huge - all in, about 900 MB.
   • JMII levels 0-4
   • JMII level 5
   • JNight
   • JNormal
   • earth-clouds

It doesn’t have as many bells and whistles as Starry Night Pro, but it’s darn good for Open Source software with a great supporting community.

Only complaints are that it has a lag as it’s loading texture files for an object you’re approaching. Really makes a convincing argument to get a wicked-fast video card!

Tonight, Adam and I went telescoping. Since Mars will be ridiculously close over the next few weeks, we thought we’d take a peek despite Chicago’s notorious sky glow.

Tonight we got looks at Mars, the moon, the Ring Nebula, and Andromeda.

A while ago, Christy and my dad teamed up to give me a CCD camera for my birthday for use with the telescope. Unfortunately, my scope’s focuser does not have the range necessary to get correct focus. Adam’s scope does, however and we’ve had decent success.

Tonight we struggled against an obstructing tree, some thin clouds, and sky glow to the south, but we still got some decent pics.

The moon was nearly full.

An ok pic of Mars - some color (slightly reddish in this photo), some variation (darker patches), and an ice cap.