Enjoy this awesome CGI display of Mars – We will be posting animations for all the planets in our solar system.
The following animation was rendered using real NASA photos. It displays a 180° turn of the red planet. It also features realistic topography and atmosphere.
Animation by JJ Del Mar
Rediscovered Astronomy will publish Solar System animations and space general info this coming 2016 as part of our effort to renew our content for our audience.
Well, the month of July is passing by and the planets Jupiter and Venus are getting apart in the western sky.
Last June 30th, we watched as the two planets entered the closest conjunction not seen since about 2000 years. We took photos of Jupiter and Venus on June 29th and before that, but we unfortunately missed the closest point due to cloud cover at our location.
Here are the photos of Jupiter and Venus conjuction.
Celestia is a free open-platform astronomy program. We have been receiving questions about how to add extra planets (models) to Celestia. We listen to what our website visitors ask us, so here’s a detailed tutorial of how to add planets, comets, asteroids, etc., to Celestia. The following tutorial works for objects in our own Solar System. [The guide for adding objects to other star systems is similar and we will post it later at our visitors’ request.]
Note: For everything you do on the PC or device, you need to have administrator rights; it needs to be your own computer or you need to have permission from the computer owner to make changes to the PC. This guide is written for computers running Windows, but the process is almost the same for Apple computers.
Software – ProgramsYou Need
Software that needs to be installed on your PC or laptop:
Celestia (free astronomy program, click to downloadfrom Celestia’s website)
Microsoft Word [or any other word processor that opens .docx files]
WordPad [or any other program to open Rich Text Format (.rtf) texts]
Tutorial
Step 1
This is tutorial for Windows, but you can try it on your Mac or Linux.
Download and open the file containing the code.
Here is the link to the document, it is a link to GoogleDrive.
Code by Rediscovered Astronomy with information from the Minor Planet Center
You must paste the code directly to WordPad or to the program you use to open Rich Text Format (.rtf) texts.
Step 2
Click File Save As on WordPad.
Step 3
Save as type: Make sure you choose Rich Text Format (RTF) from the drop down menu.
Step 4
File name: Save the file with the name 2012 VP113.ssc – The file extension again must be .ssc, otherwise Celestia won’t load the add-on planet / object.
Step 5
Text-Only format: You may get the message … remove all formatting … click yes.
Step 6
Celestia File: Your Celestia model / file should be ready to add to Celestia. Exit WordPad [click file exit].
Go to your file explorer and find the folder where you saved your file [2012 VP113.ssc from step 4]. Right click copy.
Find your Celestia – Extras folder. Here is where all Celestia add-ons should be pasted. Celestia is usually located within the Program Files (x86) folder [or Program Files]. This is the default path, C:\Program Files (x86)\Celestia\extras
Right click and paste the file named 2012 VP113.ssc to the extras folder.
As noted before, make sure you are using the PC / laptop as administrator. Click continue.
Look that your file was copied correctly to the extras folder and with the .ssc extension [type].
That’s it!
Celestia will load the add-on you’ve just created the next time you run the program.
Here’s how it should look.
Open Celestia
Wait for Celestia to load then hit enter on your keyboard.
The dialogue box Target name opens,
Type in the name of the object 2012 VP113 and hit enter again.
The top left screen of Celestia should display the model name 2012 VP113.
Press G on your keyboard for Celestia to go to your destination, 2012 VP113.
You should be there!
Written by J.J. Del Mar
Celestiais a free open-platform astronomy program.
NASA’s probe dawn approach to Ceres is happening now. The JPL NASA team is directing the Dawn space probe to the asteroid belt [dwarf] planet Ceres. JPL released the following picture Dawn took at 383, 000 km as the probe gets close to Ceres.
Ceres, JPL – NASA
The JPL team said they expect to place the space probe into Ceres orbit around March 6, 2015.
Ceres is in orbit around the sun at the asteoid belt. Dawn is the first space probe launched to study Ceres.
The following animated GIF image shows the rotation of Ceres.
