Celestia
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Celestia |
Celestia is a free program available from http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ ; it is a real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. You can travel throughout the solar system, or to any of over 100,000 stars taken from the Hipparchos catalogue, (unfortunately this rules out most binary stars from appearing in the current database) or even to other galaxies (which are rendered as misty patches, just like the real thing to the unaugmented eye. There are downloads available to increase the number of stars in the database, based on various estimates and guesses; the area modelled is roughly the same as the Terragen Sphere in Orion's Arm, especially when extended by the add-on downloads; and best of all you can model your own planets. Examples of my first attempts can be seen in the pages on some of the worlds; Nova Terra (Tau Ceti II), Penglai, Bolobo, Anomie, Ribblehead, and Ceres. Others since added include 55 Cancri, Ain Soph Aur (Delta Capricorni), Amalthea, Atlantis (Zeta 1 Reticuli II) Deucalion, Panthalassa, Ozymandias, Trees
3D models (of spacecraft or habitats for instance) can be imported into this world, and set on orbits or trajectories which will take them to the various real and imaginary worlds, and the time can be advanced to far into the future to show astronomical and (if you put them there) even historical events.
The people at the Celestia forum also seem keen to help in modifications for various uses, including animation (there is a movie function, although the resulting files are somewhat large,they can be reduced in size later by other software.).
Celestia is open source under a General Public License (GPL) which
means you can copy and distribute source code under certain conditions,
which mostly seems to be providing the full source code in any modified
product, and credit being given for the use of the images and textures.
As it is likely to be a useful tool in the continuing creation of the
various OA ventures the easiest way to do that is to refer interested
parties to the 
Celestia home page.
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