This is to advise visitors to the Celestia forum that the members of the forum and I have put together a set of exciting Educational Activities for your enjoyment and educational use. Each Activity is a tour and journey through the Celestia universe, covering a particular subject. Each Activity is written in MS Word, and is designed to be read and followed as a step by step journey. The Activities contain many facts about the topic and will launch Celestia for you and take you to some amazing places. Each is truly interactive and can be either used at home or in a classroom setting.
Each Activity comes with its own printable student worksheet that teachers can copy and distribute to students for completion and grading.
Most Activities take about 1 - 2 hours to read and complete. Two new Activities (3.3 - E and 4.3-E) are extended and enhanced tours of the complete Solar System and take 3 - 4 hours each to read and complete. All of the Educational Activities truly highlight the power of Celestia to bring the universe and Astronomy to life for you.
Each Activity may be downloaded as zip files from the following website:
http://www.fsgregs.org/celestia.
You can get a free unzipping program from winzip.com.
Once downloaded, the zip files must be unzipped and installed into your main Celestia folder (the one on your computer that contains all your Celestia files). There is a "Read-me" file accompanying zip file A of each Activity which explains how to install and use the files.
The Activities require the use of Celestia version 1.3.1 (available for free from http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia) and Microsoft Word (must be purchased from Microsoft). If you do not have MS Word, Microsoft offers a free MS Word Viewer on their website which can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=9BBB9E60-E4F3-436D-A5A7-DA0E5431E5C1&displaylang=en
A few of the links inside of the Activities also launch Apple Quicktime movies. If you do not have Quicktime, you can get it at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/
The current list of Activities available are:
* Activity 1.1 and 2.2 - a tour of the Universe - start at Earth and travel "up" into the night sky, speeding outward at hyper-light speed past the Moon, the outer planets and into the stars. Visit a variety of stars, nebula, pulsars, black holes, dark matter and a few of the galaxies beyond our own Milky Way. Get a glimpse of just how immense our universe really is.
Black Hole visited in Activity 2.2
* Activity 3.2 and 4.2 - a general tour of the Solar System - beginning at the Sun, explore our Solar System, stopping at all nine planets and some of their moons. See asteroids come close to hitting Earth, fly your own spaceship in a pass over the Kennedy Space Center, pace next to Apollo 11, observe Jupiter's Great Red Spot, attempt a dangerous flythrough of the beautiful rings of Saturn, see moons eclipsing each other, discover what it's like inside the dark blue atmosphere of Neptune, learn just how fast Voyager II is leaving the solar system, and follow alongside a comet as its tail streams out behind it.
Apollo 11 - from the Solar System, Activity 3.2
* Activity 3.3 - E and 4.3 - E (NEW) - An extended and enhanced complete tour of the Solar System, from the surface of the Sun to the outer reaches of the Oort cloud of comets. In addition to all of the stops made in Activities 3.2 and 4.2, this extended tour is designed to provide you all of the key facts needed to understand and appreciate each of the planets and their key moons. It can stand alone as the primary teaching document on the Solar System for educators. It includes key spacecraft that have visited each of the planets (including the MER Spirit and Opportunity landings on Mars), rare eclipses and conjunctions of the planets and moons, flybys of Solar System members at key moments in time, discussions of such topics as asteroid impacts, Solar System dynamics and Moon and Mars bases of the future, and animated trips down to the surface of each planet (pan around in 3D).
Saturn as seen in Activity 4.3 - Extended
* Activity 5.2 - the Terraforming of Mars - a futuristic journey into the 26th century to witness the terraforming of Mars by man from a dry, barren world to one covered with shallow seas, plants and human colonies. Witness the melting of the polar ice caps with giant space mirrors, kept on station by orbiting lasers. Observe the slow transformation of Mars from a red planet of dust and sand to one covered in water, with growing plants, an oxygen atmosphere and colonies of humans.
Mars of the far future, verdant and livable.
* Activity 6.2 - the Life and Death of Stars - a detailed and elaborately explained journey of discovery through the complete life cycle of both regular stars like our Sun, and massive stars. Over 25 stops are made to nebula, protostars, main sequence stars, Red Giants, Yellow Giants, Blue Supergiants and massive Red Supergiants. Witness the death of Earth when our Sun swells to a Red Giant and consumes it. Then continue on to see stars explode into Planetary nebula and Supernova. Hover close to rapidly spinning White Dwarfs and brilliantly hot Neutron stars. Count the pulses of rotating Pulsars and try to fly above spinning Black Holes without being sucked in.
Earth being swallowed by our swollen Sun billions of years from now.
* Activity 7.2 - The Spacecraft of Celestia - near Earth. Tour the history of the Space Program. Beginning with humble Sputnik 1, visit the key spacecraft that influenced human exploration of space, to include American, Soviet, European and Chinese craft. 18 separate spacecraft are visited near Earth, including Explorer, Mercury, Apollo, Soyuz, Skylab, Mir, the Space Shuttle, the Hubble Space Telescope, ISS and ending with Cosmos 1, a new spacecraft designed to "sail" through space on sunlight alone (it has no engines).
The highly detailed models of ISS and Shuttle Endeavour in Celestia space.
* Activity 8.2 - Spacecraft of Celestia - beyond Earth - take a fascinating journey to fly alongside the space probes that humanity has sent to the planets, including Mariner, Pioneer, Viking, Venera, Magellan, Cassini, Voyager, Mars Odyssey, the MER Spirit and Opportunity and Stardust, to name just a few. Then continue on into the future, to visit such famous Hollywood spaceships as the Discovery and Monolith (from 2001, a Space Odyssey), the Millenium Falcon, Imperial Deathstar, tie fighters and x-wings from StarWars, the USS Enterprise and Voyager and the omnious Borg Cube from the Star Trek series and a massive space station from the Babylon V series.
Activity currently under development. Here is a screenshot.
The Borg mother ship
* Activity 9.2 - the Primitive Earth and Moon System - under development - when complete, you will take a journey into the distant past to witness the early Earth billions of years ago. Be there when "Orpheus", a planet the size of Mars, smashes into Earth and breaks off large chunks of it, to form the Moon (this is the most widly accepted theory of our Moon's formation.
A view of the primitive Earth and Moon system, from the Activity
You are welcome to download and take any of the above journeys. However, please be considerate in downloading. My website is being hosted by a friend and to keep the lines from being overcrowded, please
download the Activities only one at a time. Also, please note that these activities contain massive amounts of files, textures and models. If you downloaded them all, it would require over 630 MB of computer space. You will need a reasonably new model/fast computer to enjoy them. You will probably also need a computer with a reasonable video graphics card on it (a peice of hardware that Celestia uses to draw complex images). If you have a slow computer with no video card, few if any of the Activities will run for you.
Enjoy, with my compliments. Feel free to post comments, praises
and complaints 
here, or send me a private message.
Regards,
Frank
