Celestia is a space exploration app for your computer. It's a free download, and you can use it to explore the solar system, stars, and galaxies as they exist in real life. You can also access an online community of users who share their missions, add-ons, and customizations so that everyone gets more out of their experiences with this software.

What does the app allow users to do?

Celestia is a free, open-source, and cross-platform application. It is a powerful tool for visualizing the heavens and can be used for research or education in astronomy and astrobiology.

Celestia displays thousands of galaxies across the universe on your computer screen. It provides a 3D night sky view, including all the major stars and planets. You can travel through the universe at any speed using hyperjumps or view the sky from a single location using pseudo-satellites. You can even warp time to watch the stars move throughout the day or night.

Celestia uses realistic star colors and brightnesses that are updated each night using data from the latest available sources. You can change the display to show any molecule found in space (hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, etc.) or display hydrospheres around all major planets in our solar system. You can also add your sky objects, such as nebulae or galaxies, that aren't included in the app.

Key features

• Celestia has a highly customizable user interface that includes many features. One of them is the ability to define and display your custom coordinate systems using any arbitrary basis, dynamic labels that follow objects as they move in the sky, an extensive set of editing tools for creating your own diagrams, automatic saving of changes to any part of a database, and more.

• Celestia features the most up-to-date data available, including all 8,388 named objects in the ICRS and USNG catalogs and 16 additional sources of auxiliary information. It includes comprehensive enhancements like hyperlinking between objects, images, and Wikipedia articles, total visibility control, calibrated view projections and improved support for user-created content.

• The app has an online community of users who share their own missions, add-ons, and customizations so that everyone gets more out of their experiences with this software.

However, the application has its drawbacks. One of the issues is that it does not include information about the planets of the solar system, so it can be tricky to determine which planets you are approaching or observing. The level of detail on planet surfaces is also relatively low, and even the Earth has little detail. However, you may upgrade the detail level by obtaining the package of add-ons that include planet descriptions, space vehicles, and more.

System requirements

Celestia is a free download for Mac OS X v10.15 or later. Version 1.5.12 fixes some bugs and has support for add-ons and scripts. Celestia has been localized into 27 languages.

Conclusions

Overall, Celestia is an excellent learning tool for those fascinated by everything related to Space and stars. The application has some drawbacks, but at the same time, the team makes updates and fixes for newer versions.