Celestia

Celestia

Europa, Io, and Jupiter in Celestia.
Original author(s)	Chris Laurel
Developer(s)	Chris Laurel, Celestia Development Team
Initial release	26 February 2001; 23 years ago (2001-02-26)[1]
Stable release	1.6.1 / 10 June 2011; 13 years ago (2011-06-10)[2]
Preview release	1.6.2-beta2 / 20 February 2020; 4 years ago (2020-02-20)[3]
Repository	github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia
Written in	C++
Operating system	AmigaOS 4[source?], BSD, Linux, macOS and Microsoft Windows
Size	Linux: 27.7 MB AmigaOS 4: 44.4 MB macOS: 38.7 MB Windows: 32.8 MB Source code: 52.6 MB[4]
Available in	28 languages[5]
Type	Educational software
License	GNU General Public License
Website	celestia.space

Celestia is a free 3D astronomy program for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It was created by Chris Laurel and is licensed under the GPL.

The program is based on the Hipparcos Catalogue (118,218 Stars) and allows users to display objects from artificial satellites to entire galaxies in three dimensions in OpenGL. Different from other planetarium software, the user is free to travel in the universe.

NASA and ESA have used Celestia, but it is not to be confused with Celestia 2000, ESA's own program.^[6]

On 31st October 2022, a Chinese game developer named Linfeng Li created a mobile version of Celestia for android devices.

1. ↑ "Alpha release". GitHub. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
2. ↑ "Celestia: News". celestia.space. 10 June 2011. Archived from the original on 3 April 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
3. ↑ onetwothree (20 February 2020). "New bugfix release 1.6.2-beta1 - Celestia Forums". celestia.space. Archived from the original on 18 September 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2020. The 2nd beta of upcoming 1.6.2 (windows version) is published to github.
4. ↑ Cite error: The named reference celestia-sourceforge was used but no text was provided for refs named (see the help page).
5. ↑ "Celestia localization". Transifex. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
6. ↑ "Celestia 2000 - Hipparcos - Cosmos". ESA. Retrieved 14 March 2020.