Celestia Forums

Hi. I'm one of those people that's quite fascinated with astronomy but don't really have the level of expertise that cosmology demands. Celestia is great in that it fulfills the curiosity of exploring the universe without necessarily understanding certain arcane aspects about it

I have a few questions though, so don't laugh if my questions seem silly

1. When increasing star detail, are the additional stars accurately presented or are they simply "add ins" to make the universe brighter?

2. What is the most distant star I can travel to?

3. Are objects such as black holes, pulsars, and quasars modeled in Celestia? If so, how can I find them?

4. Is it possible to reverse time fast enough to the "big crunch"? Or more accurately, does Celestia take into account the expansion of the universe?

5. When zooming out great distances, to the point where I can orbit around a few galaxies, I notice it is extremely dark (devoid of stars except in the galaxies themselves). Is that how it is theoretically supposed to be or done for simplicity's sake?


Thanks...I'll probably have more questions to think of as time goes on I hope Celestia continues to be an evolving project, where additional aspects of the universe are "plugged in" as time goes on...who knows how accurate it may be a few years down the road

1. When increasing star detail, are the additional stars accurately presented or are they simply "add ins" to make the universe brighter?

They're all accurate; Celestia uses the HIPPARCOS catalog, which has over 118,000 stars.

2. What is the most distant star I can travel to?

I'm not sure . . . The HIPPARCOS satellite measured the distances to stars using parallax. More distant stars have smaller parallaxes, and the smaller the parallax, the less accurately we're able to measure it. The uncertainty in distance for stars more than about 2000 light years away is very large. In Celestia, HD 199478 is over 8000 light years from the Sun, but the actual distance of this star could be different by a factor of 2 or more.

3. Are objects such as black holes, pulsars, and quasars modeled in Celestia? If so, how can I find them?

Not yet, but black holes and pulsars will definitely be added in future releases. Black holes may not be very interesting to look at though :>

4. Is it possible to reverse time fast enough to the "big crunch"? Or more accurately, does Celestia take into account the expansion of the universe?

Celestia doesn't model the life cycle of stars or the expansion of the universe or other processes on such huge time scales. The Celestia universe is a lot more static than the real universe.

5. When zooming out great distances, to the point where I can orbit around a few galaxies, I notice it is extremely dark (devoid of stars except in the galaxies themselves). Is that how it is theoretically supposed to be or done for simplicity's sake?

That's how it's supposed to be . . . intergalactic space is dark and empty.

--Chris

Hallo!
Thanks to a flatrate I can surf and surf and ...
...and discover Celeste

I appreciated to find not only highly qualified experts - thanks to Sammy

As time goes by I expect to learn more about astronomy
thanks to Chris and others who take time to put the latest discoveries into the internet for everybody who is interested

Now I'll try to download again. For some reason the first download stopped after 97%...

a new fan

chris wrote:

3. Are objects such as black holes, pulsars, and quasars modeled in Celestia? If so, how can I find them?

Not yet, but black holes and pulsars will definitely be added in future releases. Black holes may not be very interesting to look at though :>

I'd say that would depend on wether You guys get the accredition disks right


bye,
[L]

i went so far forward so that the orbits of every planet in the solar system collapsed, and pluto lost monmentum or something, but i cant get there by typing as it will onlu allow me to go to 9999 instead of 43000 when it happens