Celestia Forums

Hi all,

Is it possible to have more than one star in a single system?

If you add the second star as an 'emissive true' object, yes it is.
You can write an orbit for the companion star and stick it in an .ssc file in your extras folder.
You can pick up many binary stars by downloading Grant Hutchinson's nearby Stars addon;
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/celesti ... stars.html

Or you can add another star nearby with an .stc file; this star will be fixed and the pair will not orbit each other.
The Alpha Centauri system is modelled in this second way already, in the basic Celestia package.

I've changed Grant's file for Castor to show the popular (but probably erroneous) image of Castor as a triple double star with two pairs of two A-stars-
here is the result

look 'Australis Aa'

If you use Celestia v1.4.0pre6, you can define Barycenters and Stars orbiting around one another, providing multiple light sources and shadows. Please see the Forum topics Celestia 1.4.0 prerelease FAQ and Star orbits proposal.

Also, please take a look at http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/stc-file-parameters.html
.