Celestia Forums

This is probably a silly question, but is there an easy way to get a top-down view of a system in Celestia? I've tried pulling away from the central star with the orbits turned on, and rotating what I think is 90 degrees, but I'm rarely very accurate.

And using the celestial grid as a backdrop (trying to line the star up with the south pole where the gridlines converge) doesn't work on stars that aren't directly between the two poles.

Is there another simple way to get this sort of view more reliably?

In the navegation menu, enter to Go To, select the Sun(sol) and put a latitude of 90. The longitude doesnt matter...

Yes, that'll do it. "Goto Object ..." off the Navigation menu, then the name of your chosen star, Lat 90, Lon 0, Distance whatever you fancy. You'll notice that you're aligned 23.5 degrees away from the south celestial pole - that's because the rotation plane of all stars in Celestia (and the default plane of their planets' orbits) is the ecliptic plane.

Grant

Aha. Great. I knew there must be a simple way to do it... Thanks!