Celestia Forums

Dear Developers!

Thank you for great work! I use Celestia to study our Solar system dynamics and to confirm one hypothesis...
As i understand, Celestia does very precise simulation of celestial bodies dynamics - planets, satellites revolutions and their axes inclinations. A first very important question - is how precise this simulation of planets revolutions and axes inclinations ? And second question, more important - can onyone suggest me, how to elaborate Celestia to show extended celestial bodies axes and to scale orbits radius? I explain - a very hard to view/study solar system dynamics. It needs to fly over solar system here and there, orbits fades out. And each planet look as point. Instead, I need to see all solar system bodies all together.

Can anyone help me - to suggest how to elaborate Celestia? What to do?
1. To shrink solar system orbits radius to some scale (keeping all other)
2. To show well visible extended vector axes of revolution of each celestial body.

Thanks in advance.

In the data folder, you'll find a file called "solsys.ssc". Modify that such that the radii of the planets are significantly larger, or the semi-major axies are significantly (proportionally as well) smaller. (you may wish to make a backup first).

Hungry4info wrote:In the data folder, you'll find a file called "solsys.ssc". Modify that such that the radii of the planets are significantly larger, or the semi-major axies are significantly (proportionally as well) smaller. (you may wish to make a backup first).

Hungry,

As I'm sure you know, that file is called "solarsys.ssc" and not "solsys.ssc."
Sorry. Just trying to remove any undue confusion for this person.

Thanks, Brain-Dead

--- edit ---

The Windows version of Celestia is always built with SPICE support included. If you're using Windows, you do not need to compile Celestia for that.

Planetary axes can be shown by using the right-mouse-button popup menu and selecting Reference Vectors. Additional orientation graphics will be included in v1.6

A way to make Celestia look more like an orrery, with oversized planets, is provided on the MotherLode. It's down near the bottom of the page http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/scripts.php

I hope this helps a little.