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While everyone debates how many nukes it would take to adjust earth's orbit, I decided to see if our current solar distance under the new guidelines was actually a problem. I fired up Celestia and although I'm not sure what kind of factors it takes in to effect at both a macro and micro level, I figured it would give a decent representation of our solar orbit trends for the next 10 millennium at least.

It looks like around Jul 16, 2013 we're at our farthest solar orbit of around 1.0164au and around December 31, 2013 we're out our closest solar orbit at around 0.98333au. Fast forward 11970 years and around June 30, 13983 we are at our furthest solar orbit of around 1.0151au and around December 30, 13983 we're at our closest solar orbit of around .98390au. And if you advance even further to over a million years in Celestia we're still looking at solar distances right around the same range.

Sure, the close range may mean that we're too close to the sun by only 0.00667au and our saving grace is that it won't stay at .98333au all year round, but somebody may want to inform the researchers that we are outside of their range and the earth appears to be quite habitable. And for the rest of you, let's not try to solve a problem that doesn't exist and won't exist for a very, very, VERY long time.

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 :)

the pilots flew into a thunderstorm

What we can assume is that they expected only a slight increase in turbulence. The pilot in control of flying the plane told the cabin crew: "in two minutes we should enter an area where it’ll move about a bit more than at the moment, you should watch out". They also made a left turn shortly after that in hopes of avoiding even that, and then the turbulence "increased slightly". As for visibility, they probably had no visual references prior to entering the storm. For instance, as far as I can tell with Celestia the moon was not visible from their location at 0200 UTC on 20090601.

once all 3 pitots froze

We only know for sure that 2 of the indicated airspeeds were incorrect at some points, probably due to icing in the pitot tubes. The third was not recorded.

the redundant computers started disagreeing and then finally agreed that things were ugly

the effect in the cockpit is that a serious of cascading failures were unfolding

Yes, the speed inconsistency lead to the following among other things:

- alternate law in effect (see below),
- autopilot disconnecting, and
- autothrust disconnecting (although I understand the engine thrust would have stayed the same at this point until a pilot altered it).

likely overwhelming the pilots

This is pure speculation at this point.

additionally, there would be NO functional indicators for alt, speed, horizon, etc.

Wrong. There's no evidence to support malfunctioning fundamental indicators other than loss of airspeed indication, and perhaps the somewhat inconsistent stall warning.

Once the computers have faulted, they no longer share that information

See previous point.

Also, as the computers degrade authority, in an Airbus the pilots get MORE control of the aircraft.

This is a fair statement. They degraded into alternate law.

This means that controls move through larger ranges.

More or less so (stalling etc. possible), but the computers still have an intermediary role so for instance they could not go beyond max G loads in this particular mode.

As flight control reverts to failsafe mode, the controls in the cockpit do not "auto-zero".

Are you talking about auto trim? Auto trim was still available, as shown in the report. (If the aircraft had degraded into direct law, it would have been disabled.)

And the forcefeedback goes off line.

There's no force feedback that I'm aware of, other than a stick shaker during indicated stall.

Effectively, the pilots are 100% blind, and the inputs they make have no feedback whatsoever.

The report clearly states that the engines responded, and the report seems to be consistent with the aircraft responding to all "mainly nose-up" inputs by one or both pilots. What was displayed to the pilots was inconsistent for a time, yes, but again many of the instruments may never have failed at all.

They cannot even tell if they have _stopped trying_ to turn.

What do you base that on? Again other than the stall warning and airspeed indications there is every reason to believe that many if not all other instruments were working, such as:

- Information from GPS etc. (such as g

I've found that most people can't grasp how big space is. I can on a intellectual level but most people don't seem to understand just how distance even the closest stars are. I've met a few who thought a lightyear was the distance it took up to travel in a year in a modern space shuttle. But wow Voyager is going itno the black, I hope it doesn't turn into a Reaver.

Indeed. I always felt like I kind of "got it" on an intellectual level of matching big numbers to huge differences. But I realized that I didn't really get it until I started playing with Celestia, a free space simulator that lets you move around the universe using actual astronomical data. Everything is to scale in that program, and it really does give you a feel for just how big and empty space really is.

I highly recommend playing with it, for anyone who really wants to try to grasp the hugeness of space. :)

Hey! I'm just going through a teacher's program right now, and I've been looking for resources to use with smartboard. First of all, if you don't have a smartboard go here:
http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/

Then try out:
Algodoo (costs about 25 euros): Great physics simulator. I would say it would be useful even for university students. You can, however, adjust the difficulty level. It's good for kinematics, some optics, buoyancy, some fluid dynamics and a few other things. I started off with making a piston pump system.
http://www.algodoo.com/wiki/Home

Crayon physics: Great for intuitively exploring some physics concepts. It costs about 20 bucks. It's similar to above but it's closer to a game. There are a series of challenges that you accomplish (try to move a ball to a star, overcoming a series of obstacles. Learn some physics concepts through osmosis.
http://www.crayonphysics.com/

Celestia: Great freeware for exploring our galaxy (and neighboring galaxies). It implements astronomy knowledge into a space simulator. It allows to you to visit out solar system and beyond. As humanity discovers more, you can update the planet (i.e. with new exoplanets). This one is super cool, a little like Eve Online but IRL. You can also install Star Trek universe updates if you are a trekkie, as well as Star Wars.
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

Ok that's the coolest stuff. There are other things out there but they aren't as impressive. ScaleoftheUniverse is neat, but limited in classroom utility: http://www.scaleoftheuniverse.com/

For people interested in this sort of thing you should check out Celestia! Yes, it is open source. http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

In addition to a real telescope, programs like Celestia[1] and Stellarium[2] may be appropriate for classroom use. They are both available on Mac, Linux, and Windows. Stellarium can show you the sky as you'd see it with the naked eye, with a telescope, or up close (say to a planet). I remember thinking how interesting it was to use Celestia to fly a long ways away from the earth and see the constellations change and move kind of like Star Trek's Stellar Cartography. It's kind of fun to fly directly to the stars in Orion's belt and have everything move accurately. Really reinforced the idea the constellations only make sense from here on earth and that they are really stars in 3-D, which is easy to forget just gazing up at the sky. Fascinating stuff.

Maybe with a couple of LCD projectors you could build your own planetarium with Stellarium[3].

Beyond that, in future years, doing your own CCD photography may be beneficial for the kids you teach. People are taking pretty neat pictures with backyard reflectors, such as yours, and hacked web cams.

[1] http://www.shatters.net/celestia
[2] http://www.stellarium.org/
[3] http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Building_your_own_dome

space flight sim

Have you tried Celestia? It does have some rudimentary flight controls. Probably not exactly what you're after but might be a bit of fun. And it's FOSS, so there's chance for a fully-blown space flight sim.

If you would like to know more, download Celestia, an open source project to cruise around the universe in 3D.
Just select "go to object" and type in "gliese 581", you'll get the orbits of the different planets already found too.

The neat thing is, you can just "cruise" around, speed up time to see how stellar objects move, and so on... Quite cool :-)

When I fly, I really enjoy watching the city lights from the air. Losing that would be a shame. If you really want to see the sky, why not use Celestia or something similar?

I don't mean to post anonymously but didn't want to lose my modding.

How did Stellarium and/or Celestia *not* make this list!? If one's criteria is for "Cool" applications, these can't do anything but qualify.

Why bother with a space ship? All children, whilst being taught about religion, should be supplied with a copy of Celestia, and made to slow zoom out until they're able to see the Milky Way and Andromeda, to get some sense of perspective.

The second mission, which should be launched two or three months, not years, later, could include a return vehicle with additional supplies and food

That's not going to work. The reason they launch missions every two years or so is because that's when Mars is closest to the Earth. You can see this in Celestia by speeding up the time a bit.

I'd personally like one running Celestia.

The laser would be a nice touch, too, so I could write my name on the moon.

NASA releases all kinds of code. As an example, many people in the space science community rely on SPICE from JPL's Navigation and Ancillary Information Facility, and you can play from home. I think the newest version of Celestia has a CSPICE interface to get extremely accurate planetary positions and spacecraft pointings into it.

some of my colleagues are still using an old DOS shareware planetarium app. It still runs on Windows XP

Have they seen http://www.shatters.net/celestia/?

next have the club install Celestia http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html

Celestia and Stellarium are very nice but pale in comparison to WWT. Just try them out side by side. Seriously, it's easy (yes, you have to have Windows...). Celstia is at http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html and Stellarium is at http://www.stellarium.org/. Neither offers to rich visualizations, amazing high resolution images, easy navigation, great "guided tours," community features, ability to easily create your own tours and many other things. You're talking apples and oranges. I have used Celestia and Stellarium before and they're cool but this is in a totally different league. I find it very hard to believe that you actually tried WWT. Did you?

I want to see all this space imagery available in a 3D interface that's zoomable (and rotatable and translatable) so we can fly around these bodies in 3D. Jumping to addresses. And even a 4D interface, which lets us trace a path through spacetime, with dT 0, or just staying put as the objects travel around our viewpoint.

Celestia is approximately what I'm talking about, but it seems really unfit for actually visiting a planet's surface - the skins are relatively lo-rez 2D textures, and the UI is inadequate for "beaming down". And that whole UI should be navigable in realtime with not just a simple keyboard interface, but also PS3 joystick or even a Wii.

And an archive of "famous" trajectories, like all the known spacecraft missions, orbits of various bodies like comets and galactic collisions, Star Trek missions, and custom "tours" especially from astronomy schools and clubs.

Yes, I want the worlds and I want them now. But Google and MS seem bent on giving them to me, so I'm telling them just how I want it.

1. Celestia - 3D Accelerated Planetarium software

2. Kiki the Nanobot - Very good (award winning) 3d robot puzzle game

And finally- Google Earth. Not GPL obviously, but free and a lot of fun for anyone- kids included.

Also check out Celestia which lets you "travel" through space for up-close views of stars, planets, moons - even spacecraft are included. GPL, Linux, Mac, Windows. My 7 year old daughter loves it, although she needs help with the interface. For that matter, so do I.

it is, for the lack of other word, a "Simulator" that allows you to travel across the Solar System and even farther. Very good educational software.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

• Celestia
  
• Google Earth
  

Seeing KStars in KDE reminded me that there are a couple of really good FLOSS astronomy programs out there.

One is Celestia, which lets you travel/fly through the solar system, the galaxy (including several other known solar systems), and the local universe!

I know there's also a similar FLOSS planetarium program (Earth-based, rather than space-based), but I can't find it right now. Through in a pinch, Celestia can work like a planetarium too.

You probably meant to link to this: http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Celestria website

Celestia.org is a dead domain. Just list of 'searches' based on the word celestia and an offer to sell the domain name.
perhaps you meant http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ ?
      At least following the first google link there looks like the right page, and links to a sourceforge project named celestia.

Mycroft

Looks a lot like the also free Celestia:

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestia

D00d, I luv the way you say "Linuzz" instead on "Linux", and "Abble" instead of "Apple" (even if I don't really get "Abble") but you missed the obvious and oh-so-original "Open Sores" line that cracks me up everytime.

Back on topic, Google have already done this, Celestia have already done this (and Celestia is free software - sorry, "open sores"), so what's *not* to bash about Microsoft (damn, that should be M$) arriving late to the party? What does Microsoft bring to the party that we don't already have - in spades - already? Fanbois?

I know, I shouldn't feed the troll, but it was so cute, sitting there under the bridge...

Perhaps I'm just a huge geek, but I find Celestia fun. And I've never tried Orbiter, but it looks neat as well.

I think there's a good bit of potential for a NASA game. I'll be interested in seeing what they come up with.

check out Celestia, an open-source and cross platform 3-D isometric of the known universe. Oh, it runs realtime, too.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html

Did they mention when they'd be using it?

Hopefully not when Earth and Mars are on opposite ends of the Sun. I'm fairly certain that the travel times are going to vary significantly, and if what they're talking about is only possible when Earth and Mars are close, then it'll only happen once every (rough estimate) two years.

Of course that is just based on what I've seen from playing around with Celestia, available at http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

so if the program itself is off or I've been reading those numbers wrong then... meh, you should have done your own testing.

I would also recommend Celestia, because in addition to simulating the night sky it lets you "travel" to points of interests -- the planets and nearby stars, so you can view them from different angles. Lively modding community around that one, too.

There is also Celestia

You should check out Celestia, which runs both on Windows and Linux (and Mac I think). http://www.shatters.net/celestia/ Nice thing about it is that it has a huge library of add-ons that people make from NASA images. IMHO with a little work it's far superior to commercial astronomy programs (such as Starry Night), although my Celestia folder is at about 2 GB right now.

It would be cool if it was made at least as powerful as Celestia.

May I suggest an excellent application called Celestia. Quite wonderful an experience to use. It's using a 3D interface and lets you navigate our solar system and stars in our galaxy (some 120,000 stars). It has extensions, so you can load packs of new objects and functionality, e.g. satellites orbiting the earth and so on.

More info on Wikipedia and of course Celestia's homepage.

It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Stellarium is right up there with Celestia for outstanding astro simulations. I use the two together when planning a night of stargazing or meteor watching in the mountains, and highly recommend them to anyone. Both have somewhat odd UIs to get used to, but it's one of the rare cases where the app itself is so uniquely useful that the UI is a secondary concern.

Celestia is also highly recommended as a 3d star map, although last time I checked there were only about 6 exoplanets.

I have not actually seen what is on their CD, but there are some examples of free programs, most of which, have already been mentioned, that are available for both Windows and Linux.

• Firefox Web browser
• Thunderbird full-featured email program
• GIMP Image Manipulation Program
• ImageMagick software suite for creating, editing, and composing bitmap images
• Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor
• ClamWin free antivirus scanner for Windows
• 7-Zip file archiver
• Celestia space simulater that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions
• OpenOffice office suite
• Scribus professional page layout program
• AbiWord word processing program
• Gnumeric spreadsheet
• LyX Document Processor
• Gaim multi-protocol instant messaging (IM) client
• Audacity Sound Editor
• Blender the advanced 3D modeling program capable of producing high quality animations
• VLC - the cross-platform media player and streaming server
• Nvu complete Web Authoring System

Linked version with condensed summary. I wanted to find out more about some of them. Others may benefit too.

Ecto a blogging client (but the site seems to be down: try this for more info). Shareware, $17.95.
Transmit an FTP client. Shareware, $17.95
Sync Services -- comes with 10.4
BBedit text/html editor. $125, but worth it.
Missing Synch for Windows Mobile - synchronize with PDA/smartphones. $49.95/$39.95
OmniGraffle - diagramming / flowchart program. $79.95 / $149.95
ConceptDraw - another diagramming / flowchart program. $299
IChat AV - built-in to 10.4
AppleScript, Scriptdebugger - also built-in. No link. I'm getting lazy.
Microsoft Entourage -- part of MS Office.
Sketchfigher 4000 Alpha -- a game from the great Ambrosia Software. $19.00
TypeIt4Me - keyboard macro expander. $27
NetworkLocation - automatically trigger configuration changes depending upon where you are on the network (e.g., at home, work, etc.). $15
Apple Remote Desktop 3 - control / configure Mac systems remotely. $499 / $299 (unlimited / 10 systems)
MacLinkPlus - file conversion software (e.g., from WordPerfect documents to/from Word, and many others). $79
Parallels Desktop for Mac - virtualization software (e.g., run Win XP simultaneously with OS X). $79.
Remote Desktop Connection - connect remotely to a Windows desktop. FREE
Snap X Pro - screen / movie capture. $29
Boot Camp - dual boot Windows. I'm lazy.
PDF - Portable Document Format from Adobe? What?
Lingon - tool for making launchd scripts for 10.4.
Workgroup Manager - manage local systems - part of 10.4 Server.

---
Okay, a mildly interesting list. Here's a few more suggestions:

Cyberduck - FTP and SFTP client. Donationware.
VLC - cross-platform video viewer / transcoder.
Blender 3D - cross-platform 3D modelling / rendering.
Bookends - excellent bibliography software. $99
Celestia - cross-platform real-time 3D astronomy simulator.
Plot - a, uh, plotting / graphing program.
proFit - another plotting / graphing program, non-free. $95
WordService - adds a bunch of text reformatting tools to the Services menu, making them accessible in any program. The same page has a bunch of other useful and free services.

The original article lists PDF, but no tools. While its true OS X native support makes PDF pretty easy to use, there's still some tasks that are awkward and some useful tools out there to do t

Don't be a software pirate, stay legal and properly licensed by using the various free open source GPL licensed programs instead that are also available in Windows versions. Many of the best free GPL licensed open source programs which have been developed for Linux users have also been released in Windows versions. Not everyone is ready yet to move from Windows to a free GPL licensed alternative such as Ubuntu Linux. For them, a first step to freedom would be to keep on using a properly licensed copy of Windows, but to start using the various free GPL licensed alternatives to their various favorite programs. Someday, if they decide to move to a totally free operating system such as Linux they will then be able to use the Linux versions of those same programs. There is now an amazingly large complete alternative free software ecosystem of free GPL licenced software legally available for free to everyone.

Here are just a few examples of free (mostly GPL licensed) programs which are also available in Windows versions:

• OpenOffice the free office suite
• Mozilla Firefox web browser
• Thunderbird email program
• Clamwin free antivirus
• Gimp image mainpulation program for photo retouching and image composition
• ImageMagick software suite to create, edit, and compose bitmap images
• Inkscape open source scalable vector graphics editor
• PuTTY: A Free Telnet/SSH Client
• FTP client and server
• 7-Zip file archiver which can handle compression formats such as 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR
• Scribus open source page layout application
• AbiWord the free word processing program
• Gnumeric the free spreadsheet program
• Stellarium free open source planetarium
• Celestia free space simulation and space exploration program

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.

Although each day is fairly descriptive and tells you about a new object, it doesn't tell you where to find it. Here's what the book recommended:

www.astrosurf.com/astropc/cartes
www.fourmilab.ch/yoursky

The first one is a downloadable program, the second is web based. For the open source crowd i'd recommend Stellarium.

http://www.stellarium.org/

Celestia is also interesting in that it allows you to travel off the surface the earth. More akin to Starry Night pro. Not as useful to accompany the guide but fun to play around with. Also open source.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/download.html

Have Fun!

If you need a reason to learn Lua, look no farther than Celestia.

Lua is the more powerful of the two scripting languages that can be used with Celestia. You can do some awesome stuff with it, and there are lots of examples on various forums (fora?) devoted to Celestia scripting. Good times.

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.

The biggest risk running Win95/98/ME while connected to the network isn't only browsing to questionable sites, but remote probing of your machine for the abundant vulnerabilities, unless you have been quite diligent with patches from MS and are sitting behind a firewall (software and/or hardware). Either that, or you are using dialup, where the slow and intermittent connection makes it harder for remote systems to find you, and less worthwhile if they do. If you were using Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, or something similar, that probably helped, but I see remote probes being attempted at my firewall all the time, and if my Win98 machine were exposed to them, I'd expect it to have been compromised by now. So, count me as surprised.

Anyway, Celestia is a great program. However, the main constraint on your machine may not be the CPU or memory, but your graphics card. If you don't have an AGP graphics card in there with a decent amount of memory (at least 32MB but preferably *alot* more), then it isn't going to perform very well. It uses hardware textures and OpenGL for much of the rendering. Also, the memory footprint for Win XP with the default configuration will use a sizable portion of the memory you've got. You could try turning off some services to optimize memory use a little.

Celestia has a wide range of rendering options of its own that can be used to optimize performance, at the expense of how pretty it looks. If you want the full eye candy with the biggest texture maps, it ain't going to happen on the machine you describe. You need a pretty good machine with an excellent graphics card to run it at maximum quality.