Dear members of the Celestia community!
We’d like to introduce our Celestia Origin project whose goal is to upgrade Celestia 1.6.1 & 1.6.2 with the most current information about celestial bodies without modifying the source code. This project is the largest one of its kind in the Russian Internet.
Our team is constantly monitoring space-related news and publications to collect the latest information about known space objects as well as scientific theories. As the result, we have created a unique assembly of Celestia add-ons. Most of the work has been done by the team members, while the rest was acquired from other parties. Each celestial body in our assembly has been updated with all available information, including physical and orbital parameters, alternative naming and topographic locations where available.
Project’s home page is located at https://vk.com/celestiaorigin
Project Members:
- Artyom Goncharov aka Art Blos — founder and head of the project, main developer and tester of the collection;
- Askaniy Anpilogov aka Askaniy — creator of textures, models and locations, document translator, main helper with ideas;
- Artyom Volgin aka Zemlyanin — creator of tools for automatic data collection (minor bodies) and creator of several unique add-ons, a consultant for various scientific issues, help in complex calculations;
- Ivan Romanov aka Lepestronik — creator of the installation script for various OS, continues to develop the Lua Universal Tools GUI;
- Greg Frieger — creator of the largest base of 3D models of the Solar system bodies, writing utilities for import to Celestia;
- Anton Sobolev aka Vision — help with deep space objects.
Third party developers with the most significant contributions:
- Robert Skuridin aka RVS — former project member, creator of high quality virtual textures, further technical assistance;
- Gennady Lygin aka Croc — creator of Lua Universal Tools GUI;
- Alexey Nesterov aka toutatis — creator of many high-quality spacecraft models and exclusive trajectories to them;
- LukeCEL — creator of a large database of stars beyond the Milky Way;
- Thomas Tarrants aka Sirius_Alpha — creator of the most accurate and up-to-date exoplanetary database;
- FarGetaNik, Snowfall-The-Cat — creators of a number of high-quality textures for planets and moons, as well as models for spacecraft.
The latest version (published on October 30th 2020) includes:
- 9 planets (including a hypothetical one);
- 220 planetary moons (with 4 hypothetical ones);
- 5 dwarf planets;
- 9 moons of dwarf planets;
- 4,018 asteroids + 24 binary and 1 trinary;
- 66 moons of asteroids;
- 1,486 comets;
- 1 moon of comets;
- >2,499,574 stars of the Milky Way;
- 112,244 stars outside the Milky Way;
- 4,269 exoplanets + 4,084 unconfirmed + 2 exomoons + 1 exoasteroid + 4 rogue planets;
- 10,943 galaxies;
- 402 globular clusters;
- 1,102 open clusters;
- 33 nebulae;
- 133 spacecrafts.
Use the attached torrent file or the direct links to download the addon’s;
- Installation instructions
- 1) Collection installation on Windows, Linux and macOS:
1.1) Download Celestia 1.6.1 distro (or 1.6.2 for macOS):
- Windows: https://celestia.space/cc/celestia-win-161
- Linux: check your OS repository or use following https://bintray.com/celestia/releases-deb/celestia/view/readmore#read
Ensure that proposed Celestia's version matches with required one (1.6.1).
IMPORTANT: it's necessary to disable Celestia's packages updating to prevent installed collection damage;
- macOS: download an archive from "Assets" of the latest release on the page
https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/releases
For example: https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia/relea ... celestia-1.6.2-beta2-macOS.zip
1.2) Install the program at suggested standard address (on Windows) or at any other of your choice (on Windows and macOS); Linux packages will be installed to one of standard addresses automatically;
1.3) Unpack "Installers" folder from "Core" archive file manually and place it where this file located.
If you placed "Installers" folder anywhere else or installed native Celestia to non-standart address you'd need to copy full paths to archive file (without a filename) and to installed Celestia to the command line when the corresponding requests will appear;
1.4) On Windows run Windows_Install_CO.bat as an administrator (from right-click menu);
on Linux or macOS run appropriate .sh file (on Linux you'd need to run script as a root user) after making it executable using file properties menu or the command "chmod +x <scriptname>.sh".
Follow the instructions on the screen. You may install the collection either at one of the default locations or select custom one. The backup copy of native Celestia's data will be created during the installation;
1.5) You may choose one of 7 maximum textures' resolution variants.
For 1-4 variants chosen you also will be able to install monolithic textures with 8192 x 4096 px resolutin. WARNING: these textures enhance a view of objects with models but they are not applicable for weak video cards! You may install them for a testing and then uninstall if necessary independently of the collection according to 2.1). You may do a test on Enceladus by switching textures' resolution from low to medium: on weak video card you will see black gap instead of a model.
Installation variants for modern PC and notebooks:
* 1 - "hires-64k";
* 2 - "hires-32k".
Include core installation, monolithic textures with maximum 4096 x 2048 px resolution and VT-tiles of 6 level (1 variant) and 5 level (2 variant).
Installation variants for mid-level PC and notebooks:
* 3 - "medres-16k";
* 4 - "medres-8k".
Include core installation, monolithic textures with maximum 4096 x 2048 px resolution and VT-tiles of 4 level (3 variant) and 3 level (4 variant).
Installation variants for very weak PC and most of notebooks:
* 5 - "core-4k";
* 6 - "core-2k";
* 7 - "core-1k".
Include core installation, VT-tiles of 2 level and monolithic textures with maximum 4096 x 2048 px, 2048 x 1024 px and 1024 x 512 px resolution for 5, 6 and 7 variants accordingly.
1.6) If you make installation to an HDD on Windows you may need to defragment it before the first launch of Celestia Origin.
Another OS' file systems don't need a defragmentation due to these systems' features.
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2) Collection uninstallation and restoration of native Celestia:
2.1) Run Uninstall-script corresponding to your OS similary to 1.4) item and follow it's instructions.
You may choose one of two variants:
* 1 - Uninstall monolithic textures with 8192 x 4096 px resolutin only independently of the collection (see 1.5);
* 2 - Uninstall the collection completely.
Copy full path of installed Celestia to the command line when the request will appear if the script didn't find the program at it's standard location.
2.2) After Celestia's path location and detection of the backup copy an uninstallation begins according to your choice. Celestia Origin's patches located at extras\update will be deleted with the complete removal of the collection. After the complete deinstallation the restoration of native data will occur.
Pleasant flight!