Celestia for GNOME

Introduction

Celestia is an open-source, real-time space simulator. It is written in cross-platform OpenGL, allowing it to run on a multitude of operating systems. Although the Win32 and MacOS X ports are very popular, the source code can be compiled under Unix-based operating systems for four different front-ends:

Glut: for a minimal display window
GTK: for a full interface
GNOME: an extension to the GTK interface with GNOME integration
KDE: for a full interface with KDE integration

Celestia is scriptable using the Lua library. There are many third-party add-ons available, making this not only an educational tool, but also a fun diversion.

Celestia can be downloaded from the Celestia Project Page. The current version is 1.4.0.

Future Plans

While the goal is to keep Celestia/GTK as simple as possible, providing all of the core functionality, Celestia/GNOME will be integrated as tightly as possible into GNOME. Currently, this is limited to using GConf for settings and the ability to handle cel:// URLs from browsers running under GNOME. However, there are plans for Celestia/GNOME to use other functionalities provided with GNOME:

GStreamer for video capture
Help integration with Yelp

Celestia/GTK currently compiles and runs under Microsoft Windows. The code is evolving toward providing all of the functionality of the native Windows front-end.