Celestia Forums

Well everyone I think I did something no one has done yet, or if they have they never posted about it. It was something someone requested to be added to Celestia and I think I figured a way to do it until a better way is made. Take a look at these shots.

Heres a closer look.

Yes thats an aurora over the norht polar region.
Of course this is just the first try but it turned out pretty good. I will be reworking this in the next few days and will keep everyone updated. When I feel its ready I will make it available.
So let me know what you think.

Hey, hey, hey,

really new idea! I should think this could eventually be used for some sort of 'special atmospehric effects' not only during earths night, but for every planet's effetcs.

That'd be prticularly interesting if those little effects would become animated. Then we could really do nightly thunderstorms @ Earth and Jupiter, sulfur plumes on Io, hurricanes and so on...

Hope that'd be possible,

Axel

Very nice. I suppose you do that with a cloud layer.
I wonder how it looks from the surface

Wow that makes me go all goose pimply
even when i see a computer texture version

I've only even seen one, once with my very own eyes
and that was shocking.

very nice work indeed

Actually its in the night-lights texture. I was very suprised to see that it looked like it was floating abouve the rest of the texture. I plan on tweaking this some more and also getting it placed right. I believe the aurora is over the magnetic poles not the geographic ones. As this was just an experiment that went entirely right for a change I was pleased with the results. If anyone has any info on were the aurora is really placed please let me know.

Well I tweaked the auroras some more in the texture and made a movie of the north pole. You will need the DVIX5 plugin to what it.
http://homepage.mac.com/impulseman37/.c ... i-link.avi
If you look close as the movie goes you see that the cloud texture gives the aurora a look of animation. As the clouds go over the aurora dims and brightens. Of course this is sped up quite a bit. The cloud texture I use isn't very cloud dense at the north pole so the efect is very subtle. At this point this is as close to animation that Celestia can do. I have an idea of how to make lighting in the clouds but it would take 2 more layers for the clouds and I am not sure if Chris could implement this. It might bring Celestia to its knees except for on the fastest machines and video cards. At this time I feel we will just have live with things like they are. I will be making the first night texture with the auroras available in a few days or so. I need to make 2 versions. One with the city lights and one without so it could be used on other palntes.