2026-07-23 19:04 UTC
Replies (3)
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@uastronomer@mastodon.monoceros.co.za 2026-07-23 19:08
@LilFluff@mastodon.art I might be wrong but I think that's generally called planetarium software. You thinking of something like Stellarium?
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@gargle@floss.social 2026-07-23 19:16
@LilFluff@mastodon.art I believe it's called planetarium software. I'm a big fan of Stellarium. Celestia suits your use case more. Celestia is highly moddable, it can load custom star systems and planets, letting you “fly” and view skies from fictional bodies.
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@eishiya@mastodon.art 2026-07-23 19:24
@LilFluff@mastodon.art Planetarium software usually run a massive physics simulation. Each celestial body is assigned at a minimum a mass, position in 3D space, velocity (and possibly more data depending on how detailed the planetarium wants to be), and the physics engine simulates motion from there, via some combination of integration (more accurate, but can become unsolvable for complex scenarios) and discrete time steps (less accurate as steps accumulate, but can handle arbitrary complexity). (continued)