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This page contains some contributions I have made for Celestia, a realistic simulation of the Universe. Celestia is free, it is open source, it is easily expandable, and it is available for all popular operating systems. Best of all, it is a beautiful and inspiring experience.
A set of Perl scripts to produce high quality Mars NormalMaps, from MOLA elevation data, and using NMTools (but get the 1.5 version). Stitch the necessary MOLA files, and easily generate high resolution virtual textures (up to exquisitely detailed 32K) or regular textures as you prefer. They are ideal to use with a very flat Mars texture, such as the 16K made by Mario Rossi of Space Graphics. My screenshots are based on it: Valles Marineris, Olympus Mons, Gusev, northern valleys, South Pole (showing MOLA deficiencies above 88 degrees of latitude). Get the scripts (easy to use and well documented, even if you don't speak Perl). Get a 2K NormalMap (if you are sooo lazy).
Dione: A surface texture based on Ciclops' map of May 2008. See the satellite almost as Cassini photographed it: here (and the original). Download: dione-ciclops.zip (jpg textures; png's are also here if you prefer them).
Enceladus: A surface texture based on Ciclops' map of August 2008. Download: enceladus-ciclops.zip (jpg textures; png's are also here if you wish).
Tethys: A surface texture based on Ciclops' map of August 2008. Download: tethys-ciclops.zip (jpg textures; png's are here if you'd rather use them).
Mimas: A surface texture based on PDS map of August 2008. Download: mimas-pds.zip (jpg textures; find png's here). The screenshot shows it used together with a 3D model of the moon (perhaps Jestr's?).
Mpcorb2ssc: A program to extract asteroid data from the official MPCORB.DAT catalog, and converting them to Celestia format. The user can select the asteroids according to a variety of criteria. This is a command line utility, very easy to use. A Perl script is provided (OS independent, but you need Perl installed) as well as a stand alone Windows executable. Both are thoroughly documented. See screenshots of Hilda asteroids, Jupiter Trojans, and NEAs, all produced with mpcorb2ssc and Celestia. Download: mpcorb2ssc.zip (the Perl script), mpcorb2ssc-bin.zip (the win executable). If you are using Celestia 1.6+: the following new version implements alternative names for asteroids (not supported in Celestia 1.5), besides other improvements: mpcorb2ssc-1.0.zip (the Perl script), mpcorb2ssc-bin-1.0.zip (the win executable).
On 29th May, 2008, NASA probe EPOXI photographed a transit of the Moon in front of the Earth from a distance of 0.33 AU. This small addon contains orbital data for EPOXI in Celestia format, so the observation can be reproduced. See the readme file for instruction and details. There is a screenshot here.
An 8k NormalMap of the Moon, synthetically made from a shaded relief and a photographic maps. It is detailed and the relief is not so strong. Use it for fun, until true elevation data of the whole Moon become available. Get it. Preview shots here (made with John van Vliet's 16k VT).
