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A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions.

Copyright © 2001-2023, Celestia Development Team
Celestia website:https://celestiaproject.space
Celestia Wikibook:https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Celestia
Celestia forums:https://celestiaproject.space/forum/
Celestia Subreddit:https://www.reddit.com/r/Celestiasoftware/
Celestia Archive Repository:https://github.com/Anthony-B-Russo10/Celestia-Archive

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it underthe terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation;either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUTANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESSFOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details,which you should have received along with this program (filename: COPYING).If not, request a copy from:
Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place - Suite 330
Boston, MA 02111-1307
USA

Celestia will start up in a window, and if everything is working correctly,you'll see Earth in front of a field of stars. Displayed on-screen, is someinformation about your target (Earth), your speed, and the current time(Universal Time, so it'll probably be a few hours off from your computer'sclock).

Right drag the mouse to orbit Earth and you might see the Moon and somefamiliar constellations. Left dragging the mouse changes your orientationalso, but the camera rotates about its center instead of rotating aroundEarth. Rolling the mouse wheel will change your distance to Earth--you canmove light years away, then roll the wheel in the opposite direction to getback to your starting location. If your mouse lacks a wheel, you can use theHome and End keys instead.

When running Celestia, you will usually have some object selected. Currently,it's Earth, but it could also be a star, moon, spacecraft, galaxy, or someother object. The simplest way to select an object is to click on it. Tryclicking on a star to select it. The information about Earth is replaced withsome details about the star. Press G (or use the Navigation menu), and you'llzoom through space toward the selected star. If you press G again, you'llapproach the star even closer.

Press H to select our Sun, and then G to go back to our Sun. Right click onthe sun to bring up a menu of planets and other objects in the solar system.After selecting a planet from the menu, hit G again to travel toward it. Oncethere, hold down the right mouse button and drag to orbit the planet.

The Tour Guide is a list of some of the more interesting objects you can visitin Celestia. Select the Tour Guide option in the Navigation menu to displaythe Tour Guide window. Choose a destination from the list, click the Gotobutton, and you're off.

That covers the very basics. For a more in-depth look at Celestia and thecontrols available to you, download the "Celestia User's Guide" (written byFrank Gregorio), available in several languages, from:
https://celestiaproject.space/guides.html
This web page also includes links to the Celestia README file translated intoJapanese.

By default, the Star Browser window displays a table of the 100 nearest stars,along with their Distance, Apparent and Absolute Magnitude, and Type. Clickingon the column headers will sort the stars. The table is not continuouslyupdated, so if you travel to another star, you should press the Refresh buttonto update the table for your current position. The radio buttons beneath thetable let you switch between viewing a list of Nearest, Brightest, or 'Withplanets' stars. As with the solar system browser, clicking on any star namein the table will select it. Use this feature along with the Center and GoTo buttons to tour the stars visible from any night sky in the galaxy.

The Solar System Browser displays a window with a tree view of all the objectsin the nearest solar system (if there is one within a light year of your currentposition.) Clicking on the name of any object in the window will select it.You can then use the Center or Go To buttons to display that object in the mainCelestia window.

Celestia provides several ways to select an object by name...

1. Choose 'Select Object' from the Navigation menu, type in the object name, and click OK.
2. Press Enter, type in the entire object name, and press Enter again.
3. Press Enter, type in the first few characters of the object name,press the Tab key to move through the displayed listing until the object is highlighted,then press Enter again.

You can use common names, Bayer designations or catalog numbers for stars.Celestia currently supports the HIP, HD and SAO catalogs. Catalog numbers mustbe entered with a space between the prefix and the catalog number.

For up-to-the-minute answers to some common problems encountered when runningCelestia, please view either the FAQ in the Help menu or take a look at the"Celestia User's FAQ" located on the Celestia User's Forum:https://celestiaproject.space/forum/

You can modify how Celestia starts up each time you run it, by defining yourown start-up settings. Simply open the file "start.cel" in a plain texteditor and follow the in-file instructions. Also, view the celestia.cfg filein a plain text editor to see additional settings.

Celestia allows you to easily add real, hypothetical, or fictional objectsby creating new catalog files. It isnot recommended that you alter thebuilt-in data files; nearly all desired modifications and additions can bemade by placing new catalog files in Celestia's extras folders. There are threetypes of catalog files:

• ssc (solar system catalog: planets, moons, spacecraft, etc.)
• stc (star catalog)
• dsc (deep sky catalog: galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae)

All three types of catalog file are text files that can be updated with yourfavorite text editing program.

See instructions in fileINSTALL.md.

We welcome feedback, bug reports, and pull requests!

For pull requests, please stick to the following guidelines:

• Be sure to test your code changes.
• Follow the existing code style (e.g., indents).
• Put a lot of comments into the code, if necessary.
• Separate unrelated changes into multiple pull requests.