Celestia Forums

Actually it isn't even close, but it does provide another way to browse the Hipparcos database.

http://t.nomoto.org/HippLiner/index-e.html

Interesting. One thing it can do that Celestia can't is plot the motion of the stars. Of course it's probably just a linear extrapolation of current velocities; I think the reason Chris left this out was that he would prefer to do it more realistically with some kind of dynamical model. Still, I've always wanted something like that in Celestia, and a linear model would provide a fair approximation for a few thousand years.

Too bad it's only for Windows.

I tried this program and it is too confusing for me to look at anymore. maybe when I've got real lot of time on my hands.

Selden wrote:[Competition]

I don't think so. It looks like a research tool gone graphical. There have been plenty of 3D starmaps along those lines for years (chview, etc), but Celestia is likely the first to be very popular (I think; I have no idea how popular, say, StarStrider is).

Matt McIrvin wrote:Interesting. One thing it can do that Celestia can't is plot the motion of the stars. Of course it's probably just a linear extrapolation of current velocities; I think the reason Chris left this out was that he would prefer to do it more realistically with some kind of dynamical model. Still, I've always wanted something like that in Celestia, and a linear model would provide a fair approximation for a few thousand years.

A linear model is perfectly sufficient until you get into the tens of thousands of years range. I don't see that assuming a particular dynamical model would increase "realism", since you introduce extra unknowns beyond the data (the properties of the dynamical model).