Captain's Log

Celestia

A few years ago, Jackson made cool Lightwave/Premiere fly around of the solar system with info about the planets. It took him a lot of time, and in the end it looked pretty cool, compared to anything else that I'd seen done by a single person. The planets had textures, the constellations were in the distance, and the solar system was in the correct position. You can see the video badly converted to mpg here. (I took the file down from the web to save space, but if you want to see it, just leave a comment or email me and I'll get it to you.)

While crusing a thread on /., I ran into a post about 3D space simulator called Celestia. I went and checked it out, and it's even more awesome than I thought it would be. Jackson's movie was spectacular at the time, but this program is more than a small step up, it's a giant leap (for mankind). It has most of the significant objects in the known universe, all the local planets are textured, the lighting is cool, it's true to reality, and you can roam around freely at any given time! I went back a few days in the simulation (night of May 15th) and looked at the Earth's shadow pass over the moon. Sped up time, slowed it down, reversed it, and froze it. Zoomed in and out. Jumped to the moon and back. What's even more awesome is that the back drop is true to reality. The stars you see and the proportions of the planets in the distance are real. I'll stop raving about it, so you can go try it for yourself. They have cross-platform downloads available and screenshots if you don't believe me. Check it out!

One other note, this thing eats up your processor, and it does much better with a good 3d card, so I dunno how it'll run on slower computers, but it's worth the try. It even has Hubble and the ISS!