Celestia 1.6 Beginners Guide

By Thomas Ecclestone

Do you want to

• See the stars from anywhere – and any-when – on earth
• Visit Jupiter
• Discover Uranus
• Travel to distant galaxies
• Go into the future and the distant past

Celestia might not be the time travel machine of your dreams but it uses physics to determine what the galaxy used to look like tens of millions of years ago… an astronomy rendering program that is completely free and easy to use, and most of all fun!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turing's Brain
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502280473

Book preview

DEDICATION

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This book is dedicated to Gabriel Bogo, without whom it wouldn't have been written!

1 Installing Celestia

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❶ Google Install Celestia using your favorite browser

❷ Click on Celestia – Sourceforge

❸ Click on Download

❹ You may have to wait for a few seconds for the download to star

❺Once the download has started you will see the following box:

❻ Wait until the download has finished.

❼Click on

❽Click on Open

❾Select Yes in the windows dialogue asking if you want to make changes to the computer

❿The Installation dialogue will open. Click Next

⓫ Check then

⓬ If you want to change the installation directory

①Press Browse

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②Select a folder from the list

③Select

⓭ When you have the correct installation directory selected, press

⓮ the next screen gives you the option of changing the Start Menu folder. I recommend just pressing

⓯The next dialogue asks if you want to associate file types with Celestia. I recommend selecting

⓰ Finally, the setup program will display all the options you have selected.

①If you are happy with them select

②If you are not happy with them select either to change your selections or if you decide not to install Celestia after all.

⓱ A progress dialogue will appear

⓲ Once Celestia has finished installing, the following dialogue will appear

①uncheck if you do not want to display information about celestia when you finish installation

②uncheck if you do not want to start Celestia directly after installation

③ Press to finish the installation.

④If you opted to launch Celestia after installation it should start up.

⑤ To start it from the desktop doubleclick on the Celestia icon

2 Starting to Use Celestia

Menu Bar

The menu bar is at the top of the screen. It provides you with most of the commands that you need in order to use Celestia.

I’ve written a short description of each menu below, but we will go into each option in more depth latter in the book.

File Menu

The File menu gives you the ability to run scripts, capture images or movies and exit the program.

Open Script Opens a script

Scripts Select a script to run

Capture Image takes a screenshot of viewable area

Capture Movie Records a movie of viewable area

Scripts are an interesting feature in Celestia. They allow you to write short programs that can affect how Celestia displays the universe, and do anything that you