Celestia Forums

Is it possible to link Celestia with planetarium software databases f.i.
http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm which has up to
15 million stars.

Also some sort of "spacecraft" steering/modus where i can steer along
planets-comets etc.

There is this software named Starry Night Pro that has won several awards.
It actually looks a lot like Celestia, only that the graphics are in SVGA, and the entire thing runs on real-time with daily updates from the internet.

If someone could find a way to create a port, a connection between Starry Night and Celestia, I belive we would have the gratest of all astronomy softwares ever.
Just think what those two softwares could do together.

Starry Night can be found at http://www.starrynight.com , it is a commersial product, but you can download a 15 day trial.
But know that the Pro-program is well worth the 179 dollars price-tag.

Stargazer.

Just checked it. Looks nice, apart rom the pricetag.

Both Celestia and the planetariumsoftware mentioned are FREEWARE!

don't get your hopes up. Starry Night Pro is NOT Freeware. There are several versions, the cheaper they are, the fewer features they have. Pro is the real good one and costs a lot. The freeware/ shareware is fairly basic.

Of course,when you say freeware you are talking about HN SKY, not Starry Night . ( note to self - think before opening mouth )

Stargazer_2098 wrote:If someone could find a way to create a port, a connection between Starry Night and Celestia, I belive we would have the gratest of all astronomy softwares ever.

Two good softwares don't necessarily merge into a better product. Celestia is highly optimized for a very particular application, namely realtime rendering of 3D objects (meaning > 20 fps). Starry Night on the other hand, is more focused on providing lots of details (millions of stars etc) of the sky, as seen from an Earthly location. It is currently not feasible to do that in real time, calculate asteroid positions to the highest accuracy etc. Starry Night is simply a different software. But, while we're at it, what specific features of Starry Night Pro do you miss and would like to see in Celestia?

$179 sounds expensive, but when you think of all work that has gone into the software I think it's still pretty amazing. I'm glad there are commercial companies taking the risks to develop great astronomy software. Of course, the thousands of programming hours donated to develop Celestia for the benefit of our community is even more amazing.

/Alexis

ceesboog wrote:Is it possible to link Celestia with planetarium software databases f.i. http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm which has up to 15 million stars.

The problem is not lack of data in this case. The USNOA catalogue is free and downloadable and contains half a BILLION stars (and is ~8 GB, so it takes a while to DL ). The problem is how to manage all the data, and do it in > 20 fps. Another problem is that these are 2D data, we don't know the distances to all these stars => no 3D => no travelling around them.

/Alexis

I dont say that Celestia and Starry Night should become one, only that Celestia could have some sort of port into Starry Night for the users that have both these programs. If we could create many ports into other programs, includign Starry Night, Celestia would get more fame as well.
I am only saying that Celestia could have the possibility to work together with other astronomy softwares.
Together is strength, as an old saying goes.

Dont get me wrong; Celestia is a really great program, but we could make it even greater with such a port into other softwares as well.

Staragzer.

I see. I agree that Celestia and Starry Night are good at different things and therefore complement each other, but I wonder in what sense you would like them to work together. To illustrate your point, could you please give an example where a connection, "port", would be useful? Maybe that would clear up things for me.

/Alexis

ceesboog wrote:Is it possible to link Celestia with planetarium software databases f.i. http://www.hnsky.org/software.htm which has up to 15 million stars.

The problem is not lack of data in this case. The USNOA catalogue is free and downloadable and contains half a BILLION stars (and is ~8 GB, so it takes a while to DL ).

/Alexis
[/quote]

Where can I find that 'small" download ? Is that 8 GB compressable?

Just ordered GSC discs(2 or $7) for HNSKY. HNSKY can use external data
from third parties for use in its program. Perhaps Celestia can also use
this option in the future? The data is offcourse 2D and without speed/direction but it's a start for up to date info.

BTW, found url with material for inclusing: earth-bound satelites:




http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3d/JTrack3D.html


Cees Boogaart, Netherlands
http://www.oudvossemeer.comhttp://www.ceesboog.com (No astro here!)

ceesboog wrote:Where can I find that 'small" download ? Is that 8 GB compressable?

The USNO-A catalogue may not be much compressed, but there is a smaller variant called USNO-SA which contains "only" 50 million stars and is small enough to fit on a single CDROM (660MB). There is also a GSC-2.2 catalogue in construction which will contain up to 2 billion stars. The URLs: USNO-A2.0, USNO-SA2.0 and GSC-2.2.

/Alexis

http://www.total.net/~mpj/

LOL can't for get the mac os X folk can we.... especially, since NASA has been using Macs lately LOL

Besides... the more the better!!!


the final frontier awaits our eyes!!!