Celestia Forums

If you want an accurate representation, right now the answer has to be no You can define objects in .SSC files as planets that look like stars orbiting the local star, but there are some problems with this approach. Emissive objects look like they're emitting light, but they only illuminate themselves. Only the central star casts shadows. They aren't visible from outside the planetary system. Also,  objects orbit around specific other objects, they don't orbit around a common center of mass. You'd have to make a fake (invisible) central object and define the visible objects' orbits carefully if you want them to be realistic -- always on the opposite side of the central (non)mass. Ras' has created several stellar systems with multiple stars in them, but I dunno how realistic they are. They do look nice, though! In addition, Chris has mentioned (in postings on Shatters) that the orientation of the orbits of objects around other stars are not currently referenced to the solar ecliptic, so their positions as seen from Earth aren't right. e.g. transits can't be seen. You also can define additional individual stars in .STC files, and they'll be visible from Earth, but they won't be orbiting one another. I hope this clarifies things a little. (written later -- of course maybe Chris could be persuaded to add some of the necessary features in future versions of Celestia, which is why I haven't responded to your posting on Shatters. )