Celestia 1.6.0 released

[chris]

Celestia 1.6.0 is now available for all supported platforms: a self-extracting archive for Windows, a disk image for Mac OS X, and a source tarball for Linux (or any system where you'd like to compile Celestia yourself.) All of the packages can be downloaded from SourceForge:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/files/

The list of new features in version 1.6.0 runs long. I've created this page that describes just some of new features targeted at users:

http://www.celestiaproject.net/celestia/featur ... tures.html

The WikiBook has details on some of the new features designed to help add-on creators:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia/160Files

For complete information on what's new, see the build release notes here:

http://sourceforge.net/project/shownote ... _id=695491

Enjoy the new version!

--Chris

[xyz]

Thank you for this grate software!

BTW the download section on the main page still points to the old version.

[ares2101]

First off, my download is working now. I've so far just looked around Sol System, I'll starting testing my own add-ons after this. One thing I will say I was surprised by is Titan, at first I thought was seeing a glitch, it looked all weird and blue, but then I realized this new version actually displays eclipses properly, I had happened to hit Titan as it was wholly eclipsed by Saturn.

Two questions though. First, why does Titan have a weird glow when I view it with the sun behind it? Not just the edge, like a sunset thing, but the whole disk has an odd glow when the angle puts the sun behind it.

Second, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Phobos have a retrograde orbit? I noticed the old Celestia had it with a normal one, the new one still does.

[t00fri]

Two questions though. First, why does Titan have a weird glow when I view it with the sun behind it? Not just the edge, like a sunset thing, but the whole disk has an odd glow when the angle puts the sun behind it.

You don't seem to be up-to-date with the actual CICLOPS mission results...

As a physicist, let me tell you that this phenomenon is a GENERAL prediction of the so-called Mie theory of scattering of light on atmospheric droplets...

Here is a CICLOPS photo of backlit Titan:



Your "homework" is to find out, which one is from Celestia and which one is the photo?

And just in case you find other features of Titan strange, here is a comparison of the blue halo with a corresponding photo:




Fridger

PS: Let me know if you want to learn more about this. These features have, of course, been discussed extensively in this forum and I will be happy to provide the respective link...

[chris]

Second, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Phobos have a retrograde orbit? I noticed the old Celestia had it with a normal one, the new one still does.

Phobos has a normal, prograde orbit. However, Phobos is so close to Mars that it does a full orbit of Mars in less time than it takes for Mars to complete a rotation. Thus from the surface of Mars, Phobos appears to move backwards in the sky, rising in the west and setting in the east. Maybe this is what you were thinking of?

--Chris

[Chuft-Captain]

I notice that in this release S/2004 S 3 and S/2004 S 6 are no longer included (in numberedmoons.ssc)
Were they determined to be just transient clumps of dust?

I'm also sometimes getting an exception occurring when I close Celestia (not a big deal because I'm exiting anyway) but it may be an indicator of a bug.

Anyone else with a crash on exit?

CC

[ares2101]

You don't seem to be up-to-date with the actual CICLOPS mission results...

As a physicist, let me tell you that this phenomenon is a GENERAL prediction of the so-called Mie theory of scattering of light on atmospheric droplets...

Oh OK, so this comes from the light scattering through Titan's atmospheric methane droplets. I hadn't realized the light could be scattered all throughout the nightside, though I had heard the sky back there would be faintly glowing red for a reason I forget (auroras?). In hindsight, this shouldn't be surprising, Titan's atmosphere is rather thick but the body's radius isn't so great to make a traversal of light impractical like on a Gas Giant. Very interesting.

On to unrelated items.

First, I've had the chance to test my own Alpha Centauri add-ons in 1.6 now and I have 1 good thing to say and one possible glitch to point out. First, the good part:



Whoever wrote the code that made it possible for shadows to form from BOTH suns has my greatest praise! Look at that, two distinct ring shadows from Alpha Centauri A and B and one of the moons is casting a shadow over the A-lit nightside. I love it! I can't wait to see what this does for my fictionary binary systems. I also love how planets can now illuminate their moons by reflected light.

Now, I do notice one possible glitch. I noticed it in version 1.5 and I'm still seeing it. When I open up the Solar System Browser while in Alpha Centauri B, the list only contains the asteroids and planets I put around Alpha Centauri A. I have to use the other methods to navigate to my asteroids and planets, typing the name, right-clicking the sun or clicking on the bodies themselves. I don't know if this applies to all wide-binary systems, but I would be surprised if it didn't.

[ares2101]

Phobos has a normal, prograde orbit. However, Phobos is so close to Mars that it does a full orbit of Mars in less time than it takes for Mars to complete a rotation. Thus from the surface of Mars, Phobos appears to move backwards in the sky, rising in the west and setting in the east. Maybe this is what you were thinking of?

--Chris

Ah, I remember that now, yes that was it. My bad.

[danielj]

I have big problems with the download.I clicked in the link and I download a 253 kB version,which don?t have even the exe.I clicked in the direct link,but Internet Explorer couldn?t find it...

[JamesC]

Thanks Chris and all, it's great!

The grids are most useful, triaxial epplipsoids - I'd never have thought to see that, and the planetshine is impressive.

[danielj]

Ignore.It?s working now...

[bdm]

Celestia 1.6.0 displays the ecliptic as a red line. How can we toggle this off with the Windows version?

[Chuft-Captain]

Celestia 1.6.0 displays the ecliptic as a red line. How can we toggle this off with the Windows version?

If it's the same issue as here: http://shatters.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=111527#p111527
then the answer is from Chris, a couple of posts down.

CC

[afxgroup]

just released for AmigaOS4

[asteroid]

I can't get ./configure to work. Anyone know of an RPM for suse 10.2 (64bit)?

[t00fri]

I can't get ./configure to work. Anyone know of an RPM for suse 10.2 (64bit)?

SVN is broken for Linux right now, because of some major changes. Just wait a bit and try again. You should also tell what commands you entered. Are you a beginner with SVN ?

You know that before typing ./configure you MUST first type autoreconf -iv
after updating from SVN!!

Fridger

[asteroid]

I can't get ./configure to work. Anyone know of an RPM for suse 10.2 (64bit)?

SVN is broken for Linux right now, because of some major changes. Just wait a bit and try again. You should also tell what commands you entered. Are you a beginner with SVN ?

You know that before typing ./configure you MUST first type autoreconf -iv
after updating from SVN!!

Fridger

So new that I'm not even sure what SVN is )

Commands tried...
963 ./configure --with-kde
963 ./configure --with-kde --with-gtk
964 ./configure --with-kde --with-gtk --without-zlib

I can wait till whatever is broken gets fixed, I'm just excited to see all the new improvements.

[t00fri]

cartrite has Suse 10.2 installed and compiles the Celestia regularly. But there are no official RPMs for this old SUSE version. Due to the MANY different Linux distributions in existence, we have given up producing binary distributions for Linux.

It's quite easy to compile the code, once you made sure that you have installed ALL *-develop rpm packages belonging to the required runtime libraries.

You did not give us much information yet: which sources have you used? Did you start from the official 1.6.0 source tarball from here:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/cele ... z?download

And now what sort of error happens after you started ./configure??

Fridger

PS: As of today, the code for Linux from the SVN development archive is not broken anymore.

[cartrite]

Actually, the KDE gui has problems compiling celestialbrowser.cpp. The GTK gui is working. I haven't checked the QT version yet.
Note I'm using openSuse 11.1 now. I still have 10.2 but it has not been updated for the longest time. 10.2 is no longer supported.
cartrite

[t00fri]

Actually, the KDE gui has problems compiling celestialbrowser.cpp. The GTK gui is working. I haven't checked the QT version yet.
Note I'm using openSuse 11.1 now. I still have 10.2 but it has not been updated for the longest time. 10.2 is no longer supported.
cartrite

Steve,

as I just wrote in the Dev list as well, I don't have any problems building celestia-KDE with SuSE 10.3 (gcc 4.2.1) under rev. 4780. I also built all other Eigenized versions as well (Win32, Win32-Qt, Linux-KDE, Linux-gtk, Linux-gnome) without problems.

The performance is quite good throughout.

Fridger