Hello, Celestia developers!
This is not the first time somebody suggests adding nebulae to Celestia. I am fully aware of the "only one viewpoint" problem, for stating it briefly; but I think I have found a way to add nebulae without affecting much the realism of the simulation...
The suggestion is: add a "nebula render mode" to Celestia. Since the display of nebulae is only accurate when the viewing point is near Earth (let's say, in a radius of 1 light-year from it), a new Render option could display photos for all main nebulae in their correct position, and with the right angular diameter, *only* when the viewing point lies inside that Earth-centered sphere. Nebulae could be simple gif or png graphics, with the black color set to transparent.
This should be coupled with an improvement of the FOV controls. Currently, there is a minimum FOV of 33'', and for this suggestion to work, it should be reduced to less than 1'' (I don't know by heart the angular diameter of any nebula, it's just that for a smaller FOV, farther nebulae can be displayed). As a usability remark, the smallest FOVs might be better left to a new option, a "telescope mode". Things could work this way:
* FOV options allows displaying of 128 degrees of arc to 1 degree. That's more than enough for practical purposes (and I haven't found uses for values in the 128-60 range).
* Then, the "telescope mode" (a toggle) allows much smaller FOVs, from 1 degree to 1 second of arc, more or less.
The "telescope mode" need not be implemented together with the nebulae render option (it can be left to FOV controls with a smaller minimum angular value), but it might be a nifty addition to Celestia.
Please, tell me what you think of this suggestion: I think this way nebulae shouldn't ve very difficult to implement, and people could help locate and process nebulae photos for its use with Celestia fairly easily.
Best regards!
Bruckner
Adding nebulae to Celestia
If you have 3ds MAX you might be able to add nebs by making an enviroment and importing it to Celestia. I will try this out and see if it is possible...May be lack of coding allowing the enviroments to be reckoned, but its worth a shot 
I'm trying to teach the cavemen how to play scrabble, its uphill work. The only word they know is Uhh and they dont know how to spell it!
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chris
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I've got models and maps of black holes, tailed comets and other spacecraft, but Chris is only one guy unfunded. Let's get us grant!
Well, I'm not the only one working on the Celestia code now . . . dramsey and cweisbrod are both contributing, and I've had a couple other people send me code fragments too. But there's still a lot of work!
bruckner, I like your nebula idea, though I haven't given up yet on attempting to create 3D models. It would be interesting to try and create a 3D model that looked correct when viewed from Earth, and just ok when viewed from other angles--possibly just a crumply paper sort of model with a texture map of the nebula projected onto it. Volumetric rendering of nebulae is the eventual goal, but this could be a worthwhile intermediate step.
--Chris
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shrox