Provided by: celestia-gnome_1.6.1+dfsg-3_amd64 
NAME
celestia - A real-time visual space simulation
SYNOPSIS
celestia [options]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page documents briefly celestia, a 3D space simulator. Celestia is a real-
time visual simulation of space in our local region of the universe. Choose a point within
about 1000 light years of Earth, and Celestia will show you an approximation of how it
would appear to your eyes were you actually there. Some of what Celestia shows is
necessarily hypothetical--the farther away from Earth you get, the less real data there is
and the more guesswork is involved. Thus Celestia supplements observational data with
good guesses based on models of stellar and planetary processes.
Celestia is unique in its ability to allow you to navigate at an immense range of scales.
Orbit a couple kilometers above the surface of a tiny, irregular asteroid, then head off
toward Jupiter, watching it grow from a bright point of light into a looming sphere
filling your field of vision. Leave our solar system entirely and observe the sun as it
fades from a brilliant disk to a bright star, disappearing almost entirely as you head off
toward the Upsilon Andromeda system to orbit around its innermost giant planet.
OVERVIEW
Celestia will start up in a window, display a welcome message and some information about
your target (top left corner), your speed, and the current time (Universal Time, so it'll
probably be a few hours off from your computer's clock.) In Celestia, you'll generally
have an object selected; currently, it's Eros, but it could also be a star, planet,
spacecraft, or galaxy. The simplest way to select an object is to click on it. Try
clicking on a star to select it. Right drag the mouse to orbit arround the selected
target. Left dragging the mouse changes your orientation too, but the camera rotates
about its center instead of rotating around the target. Rolling the mouse wheel will
change your distance to the space station--you can move light years away, then roll the
wheel in the opposite direction to get back to your starting location. If your mouse
lacks a wheel, you can use the Home and End keys instead.
Press G and you'll zoom through space toward the selected star. If you press G again,
you'll approach the star even closer. Press H to select our Sun, and then G to go back to
our solar system. You'll find yourself half a light year away from the Sun, which looks
merely like a bright star at this range. Press G three more times to get within about 30
AU of the Sun and you will be to see a few planets become visible near the Sun.
USAGE
Mouse functions:
Left drag orient camera
Right drag orbit the selected object
Mouse wheel,
Middle drag adjust distance to selection
left click select target, double click to center
Keyboard commands:
Navigation
H Select the sun (Home)
C Center on selected object
G Goto selected object
F Follow selected object
Y Orbit the selected object at a rate synced to its rotation
ESC Cancel motion
Free movement
HOME Move closer to object
END Move farther from object
F1 Stop
F2 Set velocity to 1 km/s
F3 Set velocity to 1,000 km/s
F4 Set velocity to 1,000,000 km/s
F5 Set velocity to 1 AU/s
F6 Set velocity to 1 ly/s
A Increase velocity by 10x
Z Decrease velocity by 10x
Q Reverse direction
X Set movement direction toward center of screen
Time
Space stop time
L Time 10x faster
K Time 10x slower
J Reverse time
Options
U Toggle galaxy rendering
N Toggle planet and moon labels
O Toggle planet orbits
V Toggle HUD Text
I Toggle planet atmospheres (cloud textures)
W Toggle wireframe mode
/ Toggle constellation diagrams
= Toggle constellation labels
; Toggle earth-based equatorial coordinate sphere
B Toggle star labels
P Toggle per-pixel lighting (if supported)
[ Decrease limiting magnitude (fewer stars visible)
] Increase limiting magnitude (more stars visible)
{ Decrease ambient illumination
} Increase ambient illumination
, Narrow field of view
. Widen field of view
Other
D Run demo
` Show frames rendered per second
It's possible to choose a star or planet by name: press Enter and type in the name, and
pressing Enter again. You can use common names, or Bayer designations and HD catalog
numbers for stars. Bayer and Flamsteed designations need to be entered like "Upsilon And"
and "51 Peg". The constellation must be given as a three letter abbreviation and the full
Greek letter name spelled out. HD catalog numbers must be entered with a space between HD
and the number.
OPTIONS
The glut based version accepts the usual X Window System specific options, namely:
-display DISPLAY
Specify the X server to connect to. If not specified, the value of the DISPLAY
environment variable is used.
-geometry WxH+X+Y
Determines where window's should be created on the screen. The parameter following
-geometry should be formatted as a standard X geometry specification. The effect
of using this option is to change the GLUT initial size and initial position the
same as if glutInitWindowSize or glutInitWindowPosition were called directly.
-iconic Requests all top-level windows be created in an iconic state.
-indirect
Force the use of indirect OpenGL rendering contexts.
-direct Force the use of direct OpenGL rendering contexts (not all GLX implementations
support direct rendering contexts). A fatal error is generated if direct rendering
is not supported by the OpenGL implementation.
If neither -indirect or -direct are used to force a particular behavior, GLUT will
attempt to use direct rendering if possible and otherwise fallback to indirect
rendering.
-gldebug
After processing callbacks and/or events, check if there are any OpenGL errors by
calling glGetError. If an error is reported, print out a warning by looking up
the error code with gluErrorString. Using this option is helpful in detecting
OpenGL run-time errors.
-sync Enable synchronous X protocol transactions. This option makes it easier to track
down potential X protocol errors.
AUTHOR
Celestia has been written by Chris Laurel <claurel@www.shatters.net> and it's available
under the terms and conditions of the GNU General Public LIcense from
http://celestia.sf.net/
May 23, 2001 CELESTIA(1)