Celestia Forums

I had the doubt if this post had to be here or in the Users Forum.
Anyhow, I inform you that after a long work, on May 1st 2004 we opened the new Frasso Sabino Astronomical Museum, in the same building that hosts our 157 Frasso Sabino Observatory.
Museum’s name is “Citt? delle stelle”, that can be traslated as “Star Town”.
The link is:

http://www.ara-frasso-sabino.org/ara-inglese/star_town_1.htm

The main reason for which I’m giving this information is this:
if Celestia would not exist, the Museum would have never been realized. In fact, the pleasure I had in using Celestia a couple years ago made me think how useful it could be for public shows, so I prepared a proposal and searched for whom could help me in this realization.
Now we use some scripts, created or partly or heavily modified by me from existing ones, for public shows, lesson for students, conferences for teachers of low-middle school levels.
And the truth is that always, and I repeat always, we obtain big success in this, thanks to Celestia and all the people who allows it to exist.
(BTW, all our activities are absolutely free for everyone, without limitations)

So, I’m pleased to send my very very big “thank you” to Chris, just to avoid the problem to forget someone, but consider this “thank you” as spread to all the wonderful people that allow Celestia live and grow better and better, programming, creating textures, new worlds, models, documentation, and giving new ideas.
Thank you, Celestians!
Go on along this way, boys, it’s the right one!
By

Andrea

So it would be nice having some of these shows available for us others.

maxim

Andrea,

Unfortunately, the new Web page contains links to files on the C: drive. Those images can be seen only by someone who is using a browser while logged in interactively on the Web server. Those file addresses need to be changed into Web addresses so the rest of us can see them.

selden wrote:Andrea, unfortunately, the new Web page contains links to files on the C: drive. Those images can be seen only by someone who is using a browser while logged in interactively on the Web server. Those file addresses need to be changed into Web addresses so the rest of us can see them.

Selden, you are right: choosing the easy way, i.e. copying and translating the Italian version instead of making a new one, I missed the right links. Obviously I checked the pages before issuing them, but that C: drive IS in my PC, so everything worked fine for me.
Sorry, I'll correct in a short time.

maxim wrote:So it would be nice having some of these shows available for us others. maxim .

Maxim, you are obviously right, but I have a big problem: in my HD I have one Celestia directory for each of the shows.
So each show has its own .cel- .ssc- data- addons- models- textures, taylored for that show and nothing else.
Moreover in order to avoid the problems I had previously whem I had all the various shows as addons in the extra directory, now most of the shows work in different Solar Systems, like i Boo, or Mu Cas and so on.
The "Fantastic Worlds" show is a mix of many planets, nebulas, clusters and objects from many authors, and the other shows are the same.
This means that I should upload to Motherlode the FULL directories, and most of times they are VERY big.
Just for example, the Mars Tour (widely modified and implemented from Bob Hegwood's Tour), is 468 Mb, because having a Nvidia FX 5950 256 MB card, I use very big textures when they exist.
The Fantastic Worlds Tour is 241 Mb, Moon Tour 271 Mb, and so on. All the tours together are 2.76 Gb.
Moreover, obviously, they are all in Italian, but this is not a big problem, anyhow.
Some time ago I made available a little script that I find very useful to show as first example our Solar System, and it works as the mechanical models of my elder years, The Orrery (or Planetarium, perhaps).
Now I have widely modified it, and is about 19 Mb, so if someone is interested I'll translate in English and upload the directory to Motherlode, just to show what I'm speaking of.
By

Andrea

selden wrote:Andrea, unfortunately, the new Web page contains links to files on the C: drive. Those images can be seen only by someone who is using a browser while logged in interactively on the Web server. Those file addresses need to be changed into Web addresses so the rest of us can see them.

Selden, I made the corrections giving the right links, so now it should be OK.

http://www.ara-frasso-sabino.org/ara-inglese/star_town_1.htm

Please check and inform me if the music themes are Ok.

Thanks a lot.

Andrea

Andrea,

The pictures of the museum can be seen now, but the pictures that are part of the page design are still missing

If you look at the page using your browser, you can select the "View" menu and "Source" or "Page Source". All of the links that start with "file://" need to be changed so they start with "images/" (images/stella2.gif for example).

The music sounds OK, I think. It paused for me sometimes near the beginning (while pictures were loading, I think), and I heard a "beep", too. I'm not sure if that's in the audio or if my computer created the beep.

I hope this helps.

selden wrote:Andrea, The pictures of the museum can be seen now, but the pictures that are part of the page design are still missing
If you look at the page using your browser, you can select the "View" menu and "Source" or "Page Source". All of the links that start with "file://" need to be changed so they start with "images/" (images/stella2.gif for example). I'm not sure if that's in the audio or if my computer created the beep. I hope this helps.

Hello Selden, you are truly right, but my problem is that to produce my pages I've never studyed coding, but always used Dreamweaver, that's uncorrectly given as a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get, I mean, don't know if the achronim is correctly written), and it makes things very easy if everything goes OK, but otherwise terribly confused in case of problems like this.
So thank you for your tip regarding the "file://" code.
I have found and corrected all of them in the three pages, and now the codes are free of "file://", so I hope things will work OK.

http://www.ara-frasso-sabino.org/ara-inglese/star_town_1.htm

Regarding sound, it works very well on my PC, but I'm not sure that the used file is from Web or straight from my HD.
Anyhow, I listen no beeps, music is fine.
Thanks a lot, as usual.
By

Andrea

Andrea,

It looks great!

The beep I heard before now is just a "tick", so it must be caused by a pause in the download. I don't hear it when I play the music again using the audio control on the Web page.

selden wrote:Andrea, It looks great! The beep I heard before now is just a "tick", so it must be caused by a pause in the download. I don't hear it when I play the music again using the audio control on the Web page.

Thanks a lot, Selden, appreciated.
By

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:... on May 1st 2004 we opened the new Frasso Sabino Astronomical Museum, in the same building that hosts our 157 Frasso Sabino Observatory.

Congratulations Andrea! The museum looks really cool and the kids (small and big alike) will enjoy it very much. Good work!

don wrote: Congratulations Andrea! The museum looks really cool and the kids (small and big alike) will enjoy it very much. Good work!

Don, your approval is very appreciated indeed, thank you, and not only for your words!
By

Andrea

Thanks Andrea, but I'm sure you and your group will get more than mere "approval" from some stranger on a cyberspace forum -- just by looking at the wide eyed faces of the folks who pass through your new museum, asking all kinds of questions, as their minds are stimulated. Especially after watching one of the Celestia presentations. ... Just try and remember the first time you ran Celestia and it will give you an idea of how many people will feel when visiting your museum.

don wrote::lol: Thanks Andrea, but I'm sure you and your group will get more than mere "approval" from some stranger on a cyberspace forum -- just by looking at the wide eyed faces of the folks who pass through your new museum, asking all kinds of questions, as their minds are stimulated. Especially after watching one of the Celestia presentations. ... Just try and remember the first time you ran Celestia and it will give you an idea of how many people will feel when visiting your museum.

Yes, that's true.
I think my two best experiences has been the first with a class of 10 year old pupils, listening to their incredible questions, and for the problem we had with their teacher, because they asked to stay some more time and see other shows (obviously they won, and the visit instead of one hour and a half lasted one hour more).
The second one was with a "young" 84 years old man, that after seeing the Mars Tour, told me "Now that I've seen how beautiful it is, I would like to see men on Mars. Do you think that I'll have the time for this?".
And I told him "...probably this will happen in twenty years, so... sure you'll have!"
This is the reason why so many people like you (and, why not, me too ) use a lot of their free time to make such things real.
The reason is that this is gratifying and pays for all the sacrifices due e.g. to read a language different from your one, to understand arguments so far from the ones you are used to, to try and make mistakes, to try again and make other mistakes, up to when, at the end, the mistakes are over and you have the final result in line with your wishes.
This is wonderful, as you well know!
By and thank you

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:I think my two best experiences ...

Thank you for sharing those experiences with us -- especially for Chris, myself and Bob. You and that teacher may have fostered those young minds to become the next team of Italian Astronauts, or at least encouraged some of them to go into the field of science, math, or astronomy.

ANDREA wrote:... up to when, at the end, the mistakes are over and you have the final result in line with your wishes.

In my case, what I wish for and what I end up with are usually two totally different things, due mostly to technical, knowledge, money or other limitations. But yes, I do know what you mean.

Cheers for now,

don wrote:Cheers for now, Don

Cheers, Don!
By

Andrea

ANDREA wrote:...
This means that I should upload to Motherlode the FULL directories, and most of times they are VERY big.
Just for example, the Mars Tour (widely modified and implemented from Bob Hegwood's Tour), is 468 Mb, because having a Nvidia FX 5950 256 MB card, I use very big textures when they exist.
The Fantastic Worlds Tour is 241 Mb, Moon Tour 271 Mb, and so on. All the tours together are 2.76 Gb.
Moreover, obviously, they are all in Italian, but this is not a big problem, anyhow.
Some time ago I made available a little script that I find very useful to show as first example our Solar System, and it works as the mechanical models of my elder years, The Orrery (or Planetarium, perhaps).
Now I have widely modified it, and is about 19 Mb, so if someone is interested I'll translate in English and upload the directory to Motherlode, just to show what I'm speaking of.

Well, having the script, and having a description of what addons are used in it, would be enough in the first move. I think a lot of people have most of the addons available, so it would be only a question of reconfiguring.

And I for myself don't have a problem with italian scripts - if I like it well, I will translate it, if not I'll just use it as an example, which lines of explanation and pictures other people are following.

maxim

maxim wrote:Well, having the script, and having a description of what addons are used in it, would be enough in the first move. I think a lot of people have most of the addons available, so it would be only a question of reconfiguring. And I for myself don't have a problem with italian scripts - if I like it well, I will translate it, if not I'll just use it as an example, which lines of explanation and pictures other people are following. maxim

Maxim, I was waiting for you request, and meanwhile I have already translated the Italian text in English (or I hope so!).
The only problem has been that, as I wish to put text in the center of the page, and being bid differencies in the English and Italian text length, I had to spend some more time for this.
I'm going to upload to Motherlode the full package, because I have seen that many people (I'm one of them) have problems to reconfigure, so I prefer to give the full package, including a small .txt file with some further information.
As it will be ready in Motherlode, I'll inform in this Post.
By soon

Andrea

Well Maxim, now it's ready.
I've uploaded in Celestia Motherlode Creators, in the "andrea" folder, the .zip file The-Orrery-English.zip that you can download here:

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/creators/andrea/The-Orrery-English.zip

I've tested and it works OK.
It's big, about 17 Mb, but I was obliged to act this way in order to maintain the operations I've included in the .cel file.
In order to make things easier, read the "READ ME FIRST .txt" file, and then follow its instruction.

Moreover, act as follows:
After installing the new Celestia 1.3.2 final, change the Celestia icon on desktop as follows

1- if you like it use this icon
http://www.ara-frasso-sabino.org/Solar%20System2.ico



on the desktop;
2- modify icon's "Properties" as follows:
Destination
C:\???\CelestiaOrreryEngl\celestia.exe --fullscreen --url extras\Addons\TheOrrery\TheOrrery-English.cel

From
C:\???\CelestiaOrreryEngl

with ??? for the directory address (Program files, probably)
Copy exactly the line, it allows to open TheOrrery with the chosen resolution (better if 1024x748).
Note: this is valid for WIN XP only, for other WIN OS use only ONE space before "--"
Here are some shots of what you'll see:










Enjoy!
For any problem or doubt
[url]mc3657@mclink.it[/url]
Andrea

Regarding the orbits lines, I've noted for the first time that the moon's orbit lines are slimmer then all the other ones.



I feel that the slimmer version is more nice, less "aggressive" than the large one, so I would like to understand if this feeling is mine only or if you agree.
If there will be evidence of positive results, I'll ask Chris and/or the other creators to please put this in the wishlist, i.e. ALL the orbits in slimmer version.
Thank you

Andrea

Andrea:

The Celestia Motherlode now has a dedicated education page. It can be found at: http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/educational.html

I have posted my educational activities there. However, that is only the start. I and I am sure many others, would love to see some of your educational material posted on the page.

Would you be willing to upload selected educational tours, scripts, written documents in Italian or English to the page?

Frank