Celestia is a free, real-time, 3D space simulation. You can use it to view our Solar System and the surrounding stars from any viewpoint you like -- from the surface of the Earth, from outside the Galaxy, or trailing along behind the Cassini Saturn probe. Celestia runs best on a computer that includes a 3D graphics card, but it'll also work on a computer that does not have one.
More information about Celestia is available at http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
Philmont is a mountainous High Adventure Base run by the Boy Scouts of America. It's located in northeastern New Mexico. More than 20,000 people visit it each year for 10 days of exploration, hiking and fun.
More information about Philmont is available at the official BSA page at http://www.scouting.org/philmont/ or Selden's unofficial page at http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/philmont.html
This is an attempt to show how to install Celestia on a computer running Windows. (Celestia also is available for MacOS and Linux.) Following that, it shows the steps used to install and view a panorama -- an immersive picture of the peak of the Tooth of Time on Philmont Scout Ranch on our planet Earth.
Here's how to download and run the Celestia installation program.
Warning: your computer must not use a "download accelerator" program. They mess up the transfer something awful. If you have one installed, you should de-install it completely. Use the Windows "Control Panel" utility "Add or Remove Programs" to get rid of it.
Click on the small pictures below to see much larger versions.
Go to the SourceForge Web site and select the most recent version
of Celestia for your type of computer. Most likely you have a PC running Windows.
Here's a link to the SorceForge Web page:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=21302.
When you get there, it'll look like this:
Celestia at SourceForge
Scroll down the page until you see the link to
celestia-win32-1.4.1.exe. This is Celestia's installation program.
It contains Celestia and the files that it uses.
Celestia win32 at SourceForge
Click on it.
SourceForge will now put up a window asking which Mirror site you want
to use. Scroll down to the bottom and select one that's near you.
I usually use superb-east.dl.sourceforge.net.
Celestia SourceForge mirror
Then SourceForge will display a window saying that the download will
start momentarily
Celestia SourceForge download
Exactly what happens next depends on your Web browser.
You'll need to tell it that you want to save the installation program
somewhere on your disk. Don't try to run it while it's downloading.
Be patient: the installation program is almost 15 MegaBytes and will
take a while to download.
Once you've downloaded the installation program to a place on your computer's disk, it's time to run that installation program
Locate the installation program and double-click on its icon.
Celestia Installation Program
It'll put up an introductory software installation window.
Click on Next
Celestia Installation Window 1
Accept the license.
Celestia Installation License
Step through the remainder of the setup screens, clicking on "Next" for each
one.
Make sure all of the boxes are checked in the screen named
"Select Additional Tasks"
Celestia Installation Tasks
The next screen is the one where you tell the installation
program to install Celestia: click on the "Install" button.
Celestia Installation
Finally, after Celestia and its associated files have been installed,
you are given the option to read its introductory README file and to
run Celestia for the first time, verifying that it actually works.
Celestia Verification
Take the time to explore a little. For example, you might select the "Run Demo" option in Celestia's Help menu.
A detailed User's Guide by Frank Gregorio is available at http://www.shatters.net/celestia/documentation.html
Now that you have Celestia installed and have explored it a little, here's how to install an Addon. This uses the Philmont "Tooth of Time" panorama as its example.
Look at the Web page where this panorama Addon is provided: http://www.lepp.cornell.edu/~seb/celestia/panoramas.html#2.0
Scroll down to the link to the Zip file and click on it.
Web page of Philmont ToT Panorama
This will immediately start your Browser's download procedure.
Save the Zip file someplace convenient. (I keep all my downloaded Addon
Zip files in a download folder so I can reinstall them if necessary.)
Next, open the panorama's folder and Select (double-click on) the HTML
page tot.html
tot.html
Now it's time to look at the panorama!
Select (SINGLE-click) on the line that says "panoramic viewpoint".
It will start Celestia, if it isn't already running, and then place
you in the center of the panorama. As the HTML page says, if you
put your numeric keypad into "numeric lock" mode, you can use the 4 and
6 keys to look around.
tot.html -> panorama
After you've admired the panorama for a while, you can look around outside it.
Select one of the other links in the HTML page. Use your mouse to look around. Hold down the left-mouse-button and slide the mouse back and forth slowly.
More navigation commands and other features are described in Celestia's Help menu. Many details are described in the Celestia User's Guide.
Have fun!
If you don't tell me that something's missing, unclear or wrong, I can't improve it.