Hello,
I don't know if it was already discussed. This is only work suggestions about what I think Celestia would have to have for an common astronomy program...
I was surprised that in target command line, common astronomy words such asteroid belt or pleiades, Oort cloud, Kuiper asteroid belt, telluric planets, gazeous planets... have no reference. For the specialist as I am not, I hoped that Celestia can make a view and show me localization of these objets with which astronomy magazines fill their articles. I suspect that Celestia can't show a group of destinations such last ones.
I expected something like a large and flat orbit ring to localize asteroid belt or kuiper belt, telluric planets, gazeous planet (only color could have changed), an hollow semi-transparent sphere for the Oort cloud or Pleiades. No such drawing special 3D objects similar to orbits are available today, aren't they?
When you are on Earth, what about a bold line to surround the group of stars modelised in Celestia and representing the Pleiades?
You could also mark them as a normal object, except this would be all referenced objects that would be marked. This feature may have to enlarge star database including keywords to the real objects : an exemple : the trojans, these Jupiter asteroids...
I think these features could be the easiest way to represent a large group of objects without drawing them today (i think about Oort cloud for instance ; or even star clusters why not?) and let time to modelize them : in this case only localization would be...
This index to group of destinations seems already to exist in Celestia (1.5.0). Indeed the milky way does it a bit with a special and own vizualisation...
Finally, I think this would need different things: making scheme objects (ring orbit, sphere) to add to orbits that already exist, including keywords in modelised objects, making index of these groups of destination.
What is your opinion?