Celestia Forums

I'm testing the new "Celestia Galactica" built for OS X by Dirkpitt. While navigating around some galactic cluster (galaxies database from Selden), I was amazed how "Hubble Deep Field" it was looking. So lets start a competition on galactic exlporation. Here's my first "Deep Field" picture from Celestia :

Very Nice

Most of the (non-circular) galaxies above are incorrectly oriented in
space, since in Selden's catalog the orientation input (Axis, Angle) is
missing throughout. I am working on the problem to extract the correct
(Axis, Angle) from the min/max extension and position angle parameters
given usually in galaxy catalogs.

The same applies to Selden's Messier catalog, for example. Good
illustrations of how bad this may look are M65 and M66
from Selden's Messier *.dsc file. Their orientation is wrong by about
90 degrees! Also Andromeda's alignment (M31) is substantially
incorrect. Just to name a few...


Bye Fridger

T00fri is right. Orientations are plain wrong and it's obvious because most galaxies have the same orientation. When cruising around, it gives a strong "weird" aspect to the universe.

Actually, one of the reasons why I started this thread, is to "encourage" Fridger to finish his galactic catalog

I also hope to see many color variations, alongside the various orientations.

The fact that Celestia let the user explore the galactic distribution is one of the most amazing things. It impress me a lot.

Cham wrote:T00fri is right. Orientations are plain wrong and it's obvious because most galaxies have the same orientation. When cruising around, it gives a strong "weird" aspect to the universe.

Actually, one of the reasons why I started this thread, is to "encourage" Fridger to finish his galactic catalog

I also hope to see many color variations, alongside the various orientations.

The fact that Celestia let the user explore the galactic distribution is one of the most amazing things. It impress me a lot.

I am working hard on the orientation problem, still fiddleing with the gory details of the various frames of reference involved. Once that's settled, the rest is routine work and should not last for long.

Bye Fridger

t00fri wrote:...and should not last for long...

Coool...

IMHO, the galactic database and features, in Celestia, may becomes much more interesting than its star database. Soon, we will have many galaxies types, with several color variations, a bit like the stars types and colors in our galaxy.

I always found galaxies fascinating. Their huge number (over 100 billions visible) is very impressive. Geez, there are about 100 billions of stars in each of them ! How much alien civilisations is there, out there ? Is life an universal phenomenon ?

Too bad we can't add a star in a far away galaxy.

Here's the lastest shot I made from within Celestia :



Well, okay, this is the real thing actually, pasted on a billboard . It would be great to completely remove this addon from the installation, and get a real 3D representation of this !