Celestia/1.7.0 Changes

List of changes in Celestia 1.7.0 (work in progress).

Rendering

• Blackbody star colors are default
• Fading orbits (can be toggled)
• On ringed planets, the side of the rings facing away from the star is in shadow
• LunarLambert makes objects brighter - apparently this is correct?
• Sprite nebulae fade at a distance
• Visibility of different object types (planets, moons, etc), as well as rings, can be toggled individually
• Stars and planets can be rendered out to a distance of 1 billion light-years (increased from 10 million light-years)

Info display

• Dwarf planets and minor moons are shown in the right-click menu of their parent body (they aren't in 1.6.x)
• Temperatures are calculated for circumbinary planets

Data

• Updates to most data files, models, and textures
• Default temperatures and bolometric corrections for main-sequence stars updated

Audio

• Audio support has been added - thread

New parameters

STC files

• Temperature - in degrees Kelvin
• BoloCorrection - Bolometric correction
• Extinction - the number of magnitudes by which the star's light is extinguished

Spectral classes

• Y - for Y-class brown dwarfs
• WO - for Wolf–Rayet stars of the oxygen sequence

SSC files

• Mass - in Earth units
• New albedo parameters. Described in this issue, although the actual implementation isn't exactly the same as what was suggested.
  • BondAlbedo - Bond albedo
  • GeomAlbedo - Geometric albedo; replaces Albedo
  • Reflectivity - the visible average global reflectivity
• TempDiscrepancy - this is added to the calculated equilibrium temperature
• Temperature - in degrees Kelvin; overrides TempDiscrepancy
• TailColor - for comets

Units

For many parameters, units can be specified in angle brackets, like this: Radius<rE> 1.1

Length

For e.g. Distance, Radius, SemiMajorAxis

• <m> - meters
• <km> - kilometers
• <rE> - Earth radii
• <rJ> - Jupiter radii
• <rS> - solar radii
• <AU> - astronomical units
• <ly> - light-years
• <pc> - parsecs
• <kpc> - kiloparsecs
• <Mpc> - megaparsecs

Time

For e.g. Period

• <s> - seconds
• <min> - minutes
• <h> - hours
• <d> - days
• <y> - years

Angle

For e.g. RA, Dec, ArgOfPericenter

• <mas> - milliarcseconds
• <arcsec> - arcseconds
• <arcmin> - arcminutes
• <deg> - degrees
• <hRA> - hours of Right Ascension
• <rad> - radians

Mass

For Mass

• <kg> - kilograms
• <mE> - Earth masses
• <mJ> - Jupiter masses

Solar mass units weren't added, despite my suggestion to do so.

Locations

New location types can be found here.

Scripting

See CEL/CELX Scripting Documentation on celestia.mobi for new CEL/CELX commands.