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> And unless you're close you don't even see the spindly things, just the body. So no, it doesn't look like one at all.

Yes, it does. Repeating "it doesn't" over and over, while almost every textbook has an image similar to this:
http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/satellites_Sputnik_1_1__Kukanotas.jpg
is really disingenuous. Quit trolling.

For a visual representation of the mission, download Celestia and install the Dawn and Vesta addons. Make sure to enable "Orbits" and "Orbits/Labels" for planets, dwarf planets and spacecraft. If you select Vesta (Enter -> type Vesta -> Enter) its orbit will be visible as well. Use the time controls to view the whole mission :)

For a visual representation of the mission, download Celestia and install the Dawn and Vesta addons. Make sure to enable "Orbits" and "Orbits/Labels" for planets, dwarf planets and spacecraft. If you select Vesta (Enter -> type Vesta -> Enter) its orbit will be visible as well. Use the time controls to view the whole mission :)

for hiresolution maps see http://celestiamotherlode.net/ and mine http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_creator_details.php?creator_id=10

for hiresolution maps see http://celestiamotherlode.net/ and mine http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/show_creator_details.php?creator_id=10

well i still like Celestia and Stellarium better than Google http://img212.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc27&image=99258_IoNormal1_122_27lo.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/mercury_1K_2K_4K_Mercury_2__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/venus_1K_2K_4K_Venus_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/saturn_2K__4K_Rhea_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg

well i still like Celestia and Stellarium better than Google http://img212.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc27&image=99258_IoNormal1_122_27lo.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/mercury_1K_2K_4K_Mercury_2__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/venus_1K_2K_4K_Venus_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/saturn_2K__4K_Rhea_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg

well i still like Celestia and Stellarium better than Google http://img212.imagevenue.com/img.php?loc=loc27&image=99258_IoNormal1_122_27lo.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/mercury_1K_2K_4K_Mercury_2__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/venus_1K_2K_4K_Venus_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg http://celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/images/screenshots/various/saturn_2K__4K_Rhea_1__John_van_Vliet.jpg

Celestia fans may find an add-on with improved Pluto orbit accuracy, New Horizons orbital data, and a model for the probe useful for tracking the spacecraft.

I dunno much about horoscopes, but change is good. The names of the constellations in the Zodiac were always great for me. Laying out back on the lawn and watching the stars and planets sweep by always made me feel closer to those old guys who dreamed up the stories to explain their behaviour. The fact that the planets moved through those constellations made it all seem like a spectacular procession. Apparently Pluto didn't follow the usual crowd though.

I never learned the names of the planets and moons using acronyms or mnemonics - they just were what they were, like the names for the numbers uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove and so on. It was the stories of the Zodiac that cemented the knowledge of the names into an easily remembered framework. The asteroid Ceres was never real to me until I read a story by Heinlein in which it was featured fairly prominently.

Now I'll have to check the motherload to see when they update the names for dear old UB313 and her faithful follower.

If you haven't tried Celestia, I recommend it. It's probably the closest I'll ever get to planetary travel.

Your post intrigued me, and after some quick research with the help of Google, I agree. You can fire up Celestia and actually see some of them, just make asteroid orbits and names visible. Pluto fits right in with them; it seems to be the largest of them.

For you unbelievers, here's a list. These objects are all out of the "normal" plane of orbits, just like Pluto.

Name, Radius
Pluto, 1,151km
Ixion, 600km
Quaoar, 625km
Orcus, 800km
Varuna, 450km

And these are just some "nicely named" ones. See "2003 EL61", "2005 FY9", etc for more examples. And you can add more as well. For those with computers that aren't slow, this page contains a Celestia ssc of 1007(!) TNOs. Doughnut shaped indeed.

Also, there is a class (like 20%-30%) of them called Plutinos which share Pluto's stable 3:2 orbital resonance with Neptune. How did this come to be? There are theories, but nothing definitive yet.

The debate will continue, but if you look at that Celestia ssc of 1007 TNOs, it is pretty clear that Pluto is not a "major planet". If it is, then we've got dozens, possibly hundreds of them.

(Apologies if this has been covered before.)

I think something like $1:DVD, including production and distribution, is close. If we send it to all 113M US households, it might cost something like $120M, or less than 0.7% of NASA's $16B budget.

If they included space models/video as datasets for an open source framework like Celestia, the return could be enormous. As usual with any well-communicated NASA program.

Uniquely texturing entire terrains sounds pretty cool, but the concept isn't entirely new - just an evolution on an already-existing idea.

I think the Myth RTS games from Bungie used very large textures for the terrain, and this moved on to Halo - terrain there is drawn using a large, low-resolution texture - the red, green and blue channels are used for the colour, while the alpha channel is used to determine which of two detail textures should be used - e.g. grass or sand. It works quite well. I think Far Cry does something similar, but more advanced still.

The former are still low-resolution, though - but the not-a-game Celestia has 'virtual texture' support, for rendering silly levels of detail on planet surfaces. Like, up to 128k by 64k pixels. The textures are split into many, many files for each level of detail, which are streamed in from the hard disk when required. Works fairly well.

Combining the two approaches, though, seems very new - the 'Mega Texturing' from John Carmack is probably dramatically different from an implementation point of view, and sounds rather interesting at any rate - the description of the upgraded, non-Quake-Wars version makes it sound like it could uniquely texture a whole world beyond just terrain, so could work for simulating real cities, as opposed to smoke-and-mirrors game cities.

I'm sure he talked about this in a .plan thing some years ago - anyone want to find it?

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.ph p

The 64k data from Blue Marble is here:

http://celestiamotherlode.net/creators/jestr/JMII_ DDS_Level5_Full.zip

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.ph p

The 64k data from Blue Marble is here:

http://celestiamotherlode.net/creators/jestr/JMII_ DDS_Level5_Full.zip

http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/earth.ph p

The 64k data from Blue Marble is here:

http://celestiamotherlode.net/creators/jestr/JMII_ DDS_Level5_Full.zip

I like to cruise around in Celestia, but I can't find models on a scale larger than galaxies. The "sky show" I saw at the Hayden Planetarium (or whatever they call it now, "Rose" something) last year, a "zoom out" from NYC to "the biggest picture" of the whole Universe, looked a lot like a Celestia animation. Is there some kind of model I can run on my Linux machine to cruise the *whole* universe? To look at those several degrees of "superstructures" surrounding us, without that annoying 30min time limit, or Tom Hanks' annoying voice?

Think Google Earth, but for the solar system/galaxy/universe. I just spent a hour playing with this, checking out the plug-ins for real and fictional spacecraft.

Why don't they just add models, and maybe an upgrade, to the FOSS Celestia? It's already got a fanatical userbase, very detailed engine, and lots of models. If the EU is going to spend the people's money on software, the people should get the source code they bought.

Those beautiful NASA animations look a lot like Celestia. We paid to make them - where are the downloadable models?

I should mention that anyone interested in 3-D astronoomy visualizations should check out Celestia, and my site related to it, the Celestia Motherlode. We have a scaled down MOLA dataset, among others availalbe on this page.

I should mention that anyone interested in 3-D astronoomy visualizations should check out Celestia, and my site related to it, the Celestia Motherlode. We have a scaled down MOLA dataset, among others availalbe on this page.

Probably suggested already, but Celestia will provide glorious renderings of the Earth, complete with some ridiculously high-resolution texture maps.

There are 'night maps' based on the Earthlights image - they're probably a bit bright when seen in Celestia, especially when compared with the day side of the Earth, but they look utterly lovely. :-)

Once you've built your perfect Earth, you can work on kitting out the rest of your ideal Solar System with the other stuff people have posted on the Celestia Motherlode...

Probably suggested already, but Celestia will provide glorious renderings of the Earth, complete with some ridiculously high-resolution texture maps.

There are 'night maps' based on the Earthlights image - they're probably a bit bright when seen in Celestia, especially when compared with the day side of the Earth, but they look utterly lovely. :-)

Once you've built your perfect Earth, you can work on kitting out the rest of your ideal Solar System with the other stuff people have posted on the Celestia Motherlode...