If you enjoy gazing at the night sky, you’ll love Celestia. This wonderful “free-space” simulation will take you to thousands of objects and locations in our vast universe, all in color and 3-D. The menus are easy to navigate and the experience is pretty darn close to what you’ll find in many physical planetaria.
A great way to get started with Celestia is to view the Demo (you’ll find it on the Help menu). Then I recommend reading the “Readme” file (Click Start > Programs > Celestia > Readme). This short text file will explain the basics on the use of the program and its many powerful features.
Celestia features virtually every object in the known universe including stars, planets, moons, comets, asteroids galaxies, nebulae and more. As more objects are discovered, they can be added to the Celestia database simply by downloading add-on modules.
Celestia is completely free to download and use, and you’ll find it right here.