Celestia Forums

Anyone know if there are high fidelity gravity models for objects like Earth's Moon in Celestia? We have a few models in our simulations but I would like to cross check them with Celestia. We are using LP100 and GRAIL.

I'd like to note one thing: Celestia is more of an emulation (no gravity simulation between planetary bodies) than a simulation.

If you are going to plot a spacecraft in Celestia with gravity models included, i recommend using GMAT to make the SPICE files for the trajectory of the spacecraft.

Rather than thinking of Celestia as a simulator or even an emulator, I prefer to think of it as a 3D display program which happens to be optimized for showing astronomical objects. Celestia has to be told where each object is and what it looks like. It draws planets, moons, stars and DSOs in their correct locations only because of the "catalogs" which tell it where to draw them. As Gurren wrote, Celestia does not implement gravity. Nor does it implement any other inter-body forces. Any such interactions are only apparent. They seem to happen only because of how detailed the catalog entries are.