Celestia Forums

Hi, how is Celestia compared with Starry Night, according to the specs below.

For 2 weeks ago I downloaded Celestia 1.30, which looks very promising. But Celestia crashes so often within seconds or few minutes, (I posted a description in the bugs forum, but still have the problem).

So i'm thinking of buying Starry Nights, and what is your opinion

Regards Lars

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Starry Night specs:
16.000.000 stars on CD.
Corrected NGC/IC catalogs
Tycho 2/Hipparcos 3-D star database
PGC catalog with over 70.000 galaxies
Tully database with 3-D positions of 28.000 galaxies.
Online access to more than 500.000.000 units.

1) starry night is no teven similar to celestia

Ooops!....

ElPelado wrote:1) starry night is no teven similar to celestia

Nothing is similar to Celestia!

Hi ElPelado;-)
...
Bye Fridger

well well well, i think that this is going out of topic....

Hi ElPelado;-)

...

Bye Fridger

A good free alternative to Starry Night is Celestia.

Christophe wrote:and a good free alternative to Starry Night is Celestia.

I thikn its the other way around, starry night is an alternative to celestia

i think that starry night is not an alternative for celestia, and celestia is no tan alternative for starry night. the two programs are very different!

....

I use both Starry Night and Celestia. Starry Night is much more a planitarium program and Celestia is more of a Solar System explorer.

For instance, on Starry Night I can input my exact Long and Lat cords of my hometown and get a chart of the night sky for any time...plus I can see looking North, South etc etc. Then if I want I can print out a chart for a specific time and sky position. Celestia still can't do that.

Celestia from what I've seen is more into making planets look real with different textures and the like. I also like the Voyager flyby scripts and things like that.

But the thing is, Starry Night is used more in my household than Celestia is.

ScottGant wrote:
For instance, on Starry Night I can input my exact Long and Lat cords of my hometown and get a chart of the night sky for any time...plus I can see looking North, South etc etc. Then if I want I can print out a chart for a specific time and sky position. Celestia still can't do that.

Indeed, Celestia can do all this.

I even have my small hometown entered as a location, so instead of entering the long lat coordinates, I can also just type its name. Then switching to alt-azimuth mode I can nicely change azimuth until I face whatever direction I want to face. Then I can make a screenshot of that view with or without the grid, constellation boundaries and asterisms switched on or off...This works not only on earth, of course;-)

Was there something missing? Oh yes: the coordinate readout...and an azimuthal grid and an outline display for galaxies, nebulae and clusters...

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:Was there something missing? Oh yes: the coordinate readout...and an azimuthal grid and an outline display for galaxies, nebulae and clusters...

And to squash the bugs in Alt-Azimuth mode...

And telescope control? KStars can do it...

t00fri wrote:I even have my small hometown entered as a location, so instead of entering the long lat coordinates, I can also just type its name. Bye Fridger

Fridger, how do i do this?
where do i type London to go to it?

I have the Locations turned on.

Starry Night also uses a very advanced Nevtonian and celestial mechanics engine, which is much more accurate then Celestia appears to be in predicting past, present and future celestial events.
To my astonishment, Martin Schweiger's Orbiter seems to use a very similar engine to that of SN - indeed; the two programs could both predict a lunar eclipse which will take place in the 22nd century, while in Celestia, this eclipse was not displayed quite as good.

Celestia is a great alternative to Starry Night - but Starry Night seem to be much more presise.

Eventually, the two programs really can't be compared side-by-side, they have a lot of similarities, and yet many differences as well - Starry Night is more advanced and more accurate (and therefore the best choice for a serious stargazer), though Celestia has more different way's of doing things - besides, Celestia is free, and is Open Source - Starry Night is not.

One thing for sure: they are both great programs which I recomend to any space-enthusiast or amateur astronomer such as myself.


Stargazer.

Stargazer_2098 wrote:Starry Night also uses a very advanced Nevtonian and celestial mechanics engine, which is much more accurate then Celestia appears to be in predicting past, present and future celestial events.
To my astonishment, Martin Schweiger's Orbiter seems to use a very similar engine to that of SN - indeed; the two programs could both predict a lunar eclipse which will take place in the 22nd century, while in Celestia, this eclipse was not displayed quite as good.

Celestia is a great alternative to Starry Night - but Starry Night seem to be much more presise.
...
Stargazer.

In the 22nd century you will unfortunately be dead and Starry Night will not exist anymore;-)

I don't own such commercial programs, but I think a more systematic comparison would be most surprising/revealing. Did you compare for example the precision of mutual events of the Galilean moons (eclipses etc among each other) as well as those of Saturn, Uranus...

Bye Fridger

Stargazer_2098 wrote:Celestia is free, and is Open Source - Starry Night is not.

And Celestia is multi-platform. No Starry Night for me.

Stargazer_2098 wrote:Starry Night also uses a very advanced Nevtonian and celestial mechanics engine, which is much more accurate then Celestia appears to be in predicting past, present and future celestial events.
To my astonishment, Martin Schweiger's Orbiter seems to use a very similar engine to that of SN - indeed; the two programs could both predict a lunar eclipse which will take place in the 22nd century, while in Celestia, this eclipse was not displayed quite as good.

Celestia should be at least as precise if not more so than Starry Night. If not, it's a Celestia bug . . . Orbiter, Starry Night, and Celestia all use the VSOP87 theory for planetary orbits. I'm not sure how many terms Orbiter and Starry Night use, but Celestia uses around 1000. Which version are you using?

--Chris

Hmm . . . I think that the Moon's orbit could be more accurate. That's probably the only place where Celestia lags Starry Night. I'll switch to the ELP2000 series and kick some dirt on Starry Night

--Chris