Celestia Forums

Hi, everybody
(another time sorry for my bad english...)

After some weeks of use, after downloading a ton of maps and add-ons, after some questions in the forum, I?€™d like to give my humble opinion.

What I have understood is that there is a hard core of people working on the simulation, some ?€?otaku?€

ElChristou,

If you haven't already, you should visit the documentation page of the Motherlode site:

http://celestiamotherlode.net/

The "Users Guide" by Frank Gregorio has lots of details. It has been translated into several different languages.

Does this help?

ElChristou,

Now I want to dream a little: The next step is to give Celestia another dimension in the learning way?€¦ Here it?€™s a modification of the code (but perhaps not so). More information on each body via the context menu?€¦ These already exist in part in the upper left corner and with the web info link but I thing it can be better integrated with a database, no link to avoid cpu bad use Wink, and no need to be connected to use the function. Just the minimum on screen (name of body, and distance to observer) (by the way is the FOV really so important to be always present at the bottom right? Can it disappear after a few second after use?)?€¦ Well I can imagine that is not a priority for developers but perhaps in the future with the help of everyone?€¦

This issue was also extensively discussed in the forum before. One aspect that speaks against this proposal is that most of us want the displayed detailed information to be correct or sufficiently accurate at least. This in fact is not so easy to make sure in the course of time. Official data bases are updated by experts in the field who are presumably also payed for doing this job. Astronomy and Astrophysics are quite fast moving notably in recent times. Think of the number of new exoplanets just as one example. Even global parameters of stars may change significantly, since often they are extracted from large-scale global analyses.

In view of the huge amount of objects Celestia is administrating, keeping uptodate with high accuracy standards is very work-intensive. Hence delegating this job to data bases of professional reputation seems the better solution to some of us...

Bye Fridger

Right Selden the Franck Gregorio?€?s Celestia user?€™s guide is a more than usefull for a newbie; the introduction is good but the doc is only a ?€?how to use?€

ElChristou wrote:So first why this doc is not included in the default package? I know there is a read me file, but these one is much better (could be a PDF)?€¦

I asked about this before (or at least "why isn't the FAQ document included in the package"), because I'm sure it would answer a lot of newbie questions... I think the response was largely that no-one had the time or inclination to turn it into a proper standalone document...

Dear Elchristou:

I'm delighted to advise you that your request has been fulfilled. Not only does Celestia have the How-to-manual available, but it has an extensive set of lessons on what lies up there in space. The lessons are named the Celestia Educational Activities, and are available on the Motherlode at: http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/educational.html

There are nine separate lessons with two more on the way. They are written in simple language for a 7th to 12th grade audience and take you on a detailed series of journeys through Celestia space. Along the way, they explain astronomical facts in great detail. You get to visit all the planets, moons and spacecraft in the Solar System and learn about them in detail. There are video movies imbedded in the Activities. There are hundreds of locations that they take you to in Celestia's world of space. You can visit Sputnik on the day it was launched, or a rotating Black Hole around an exploded Supernova. You can accompany the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn and ride down to the surface of Titan with Huygens.

The Activities will take you forward in time, and backward in history. Meet Voyager 2 as it sails beyond the orbit of Pluto. Accompany Neal Armstrong in 1969 as he orbits the moon in Apollo 11. Travel to the 26th century to watch humans terraform the planet Mars into a green, livable world. Drop by the Orion Nebula to watch new stars being born. You can even travel forward to the far future to witness our sun swelling to a Red Giant.

Although they come in separate units, the Activities collectively add up in length to that of a small book (over 200 pages), and are so extensive that it will take you over 18 hours to take all of their journeys.

They tour the universe, the Solar System, the spacecraft of humans, the complete life cycle of stars, and several other great topics. To date, over 100,000 people have downloaded one or more of them from either the Motherlode, or from my website. All documents and add-ons needed for the activities are included in their download zip files.

Click on the "sticky" that discusses them. You can find it at the top of this forum section.

Visit the Motherlode website and begin the journey that you seek.

Enjoy with my compliments.

Regards,

Frank Gregorio

Frank,

I think ElChristou was wondering why your Users Guide isn't included with Celestia in the installation kit, which you didn't comment on.

He's also looking for something that describes more of the philosophy and history of Celestia itself.

Technically, files like this are omitted because the installation kits are created from files that are in Celestia's CVS library on SourceForge. As the FAQ explains, much of Celestia's supporting documentation is written by people who are not involved in developing Celestia.

Tx Franck for this nice post,

I haven?€™t yet been looking further in ?€?the script world?€

selden wrote:
Technically, files like this are omitted because the installation kits are created from files that are in Celestia's CVS library on SourceForge. As the FAQ explains, much of Celestia's supporting documentation is written by people who are not involved in developing Celestia.

Selden,

I?€™m not expert (CVS library????) but it?€™s look like a technical problem?€¦ Is it so complicated for example to let Franck (or others I don?€™t know) the charge of the read me file (in PDF better than rtf of txt)?