資料介紹

Celestia是一個免費的開放源代碼天文類軟件，通過它你不僅可以鳥瞰地球，還可以暢游太陽系，以及其它多達10萬顆星，甚至是銀河系以外的星座。你可以遠觀星雲，也可以近看飛行器。還可以通過設定時間，查看星體的運行軌跡。所有的查看和縮放都非常平滑。Celestia 包含了巨大的天文數據庫，包括恆星，行星，衛星，彗星以及太空船；如果原帶的這些庫還不能滿足你，你可以方便的下載和安裝擴展信息庫。 提醒諸位，如果你以後打算在此模型中加載數據的話清把此模型裝在你最大的盤裡，最好不要裝在C盤，小心以後加了別的東西後影響電腦速度。　

Celestia與Stellarium最大的不同是視角的不同：Stellarium模擬的是當地的星空，以地面為出發點，仰望星空。Celestia則飛出地球，在太空中遨游。它還內置了抓圖及錄像功能，方便用戶把精彩的瞬間即時記錄並且和朋友分享。另外，Celestia還有自己的Motherlode，允許用戶創建3D模型。

Celestia操作並不復雜，甚至可以通過快捷鍵控制。[F8>開始運行，按1～9是快捷鍵，代表九大行星（現在是八大了，便宜了冥王星了^0^），再按“G”可以飛到你想要的行星了。空格鍵是暫停和恢復。“K”和“L”是時間加速和減速。“O”是顯示軌道。上下左右控制方向。
引用Celestia

NASA uses Celestia in its outreach program. The software uses facts when possible, and at other times it guesses how the cosmos look using astronomical theory. Celestia doesn't tell you what's a fact and what's a guess, so you may see something -- for example, the sunspots on Polaris -- and wonder if it's real. I think Celestia's guesses make it more useful, not less.

Celestia needs hardware graphic acceleration on most computers. It has GNOME, KDE, and generic Gimp Toolkit (Gtk) front ends, but you need to choose which one to use when you compile Celestia, or choose the Celestia package for your distribution. I used the KDE front end for this review.

Celestia comes with a lot of detail: it has images and data that help render the surface of all the planets and major moons in our solar system, several planets outside our solar system, and thousands of stars. And if that isn't enough, Celestia's official add-on site, The Celestia Motherlode, has more than 10GB of extensions. Some extensions render high-quality images of specific places or spacecraft. Others add planets and space ships from science fiction and fantasy universes such as Babylon 5 and Star Wars.

Start Celestia from a desktop menu icon or type celestia into a command prompt. You start with the view from an invisible spacecraft orbiting the Sun near Earth.

You can get a feel for Celestia by using its built-in demo. Press d on the keyboard, and Celestia takes you on a tour of the universe and of Celestia's features. Or just start driving your space ship: press a to move forward, use the keyboard arrow keys to change direction, and press z to slow down.

Similar to Stellarium, you can press l to speed up time and press k to slow it down. While watching Earth, speeding up time makes the change from night to day happen every few seconds. Speed up time more to make the moon complete a full orbit every few seconds. Watch carefully and you'll see lunar and solar eclipses. During a solar eclipse, I suggest you slow down time to watch the Moon's shadow travel across Earth. You can compare Celestia to pictures of a real solar eclipse taken by astronauts on the International Space Station.

Click on a light source to display information about it. Double-click on the light source to center it in your display. Press g to go to the selected object or press f to follow it as it moves.

Press p, m, and b to turn on and off the labels of nearby planets, moons, and stars. Press / to draw lines between the stars in constellations. With the constellation lines turned on, you can travel far outside the solar system to see how the constellations change and eventually become unrecognizable.

I don't know of any free software educational program that is more fun or more beautiful than Celestia. I wish it were a little easier to use -- sometimes I think that learning to fly the space shuttle is probably easier than learning to fly Celestia's invisible space ship -- but mastering Celestia puts all the beauty of the cosmos at your fingertips.


Windows
The Windows package of Celestia is a self-extracting archive; download it to your computer and then run it.

Mac OS X
The Mac OS X package is a disk image. Download it to your computer, double click it, and follow the instructions in the README.

Linux (x86) Version 1.4.1
If you are running Linux, you should check first with your distribution; there is a good chance that the package is available to you in the format best suited to your installation. A pre-compiled 32-bit version is provided in the autopackage format. It should run on any distribution that has OpenGL and GTK+ 2.6.

Source Code
Celestia is an open-source project. As such, its source code is provided and is freely modifiable and redistributable as per the GNU Public License. Installation instructions are provided in the INSTALL file.

軟件說明：第一個文件為PC版安裝包，第二個文件為Mac版安裝包，第三個文件為Linux安裝包，請您根據自己系統合理下載。PC版具體使用操作參看主程序“幫助---->鍵盤操作幫助”。另外，本人上網時間有限，且為共享寬帶上網，歡迎大家做種分流。
官方網站：http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
運行環境：Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7;MacOS X 10.3.x or greater;Linux(x86)with OpenGL and GTK+ 2.6
安全檢測: 經Microsoft Security Essentials檢測無毒，版本2.0.657.0
安裝測試：windows 7下已通過安裝測試