Celestia

[Denis12]

I have the beautifull program celestia downloaded on my PC ,and for example when i get saturn in view on my PC ,you can see its illumination of the sun. And my question is ,is the rate of illumination of saturn from the sun showed on my PC approximately how it is in reality? And i can also see the moons of saturn,seeing orbiting saturn. Are the locations and positions of the moons of saturn the locations of how it (really) is at that moment? Can you help me to answer this questions? Thanks. Denis.

[grant hutchison]

Celestia has a whole forum (http://www.shatters.net/forum/) of its own, where kindly people will answer your questions.

In answer to your two specific questions:
1) It's impossible to reproduce the full range of illumination existing in the natural world on a computer screen - and would you really want a computer monitor that could light up as brightly as the sun? So Celestia doesn't attempt this. For most of the solar system (Earth to Pluto), your eyes would adapt to the local level of illumination quite readily: so making Pluto very dark, for instance, would he actively misleading.
2) The major moons of Saturn are shown quite precisely, with orbits computed from complex formulae: you can check this is true by simulating a couple of Cassini fly-pasts. The others have simple Keplerian orbits: ellipses that are moderately accurate so long as you don't go too far into the past or future.

You should take any other questions over to the Celestia forum, since they're probably of limited interest to folk here.

Grant Hutchison

[grant hutchison]

Denis:
You've allowed 24 hours to go by without acknowledging my reply to your query. Yet on other threads you're hassling us for a reply after only a couple of hours have passed.
If you don't start acknowledging people's help, soon no-one will help you.

Grant Hutchison