Celestia | Explore the universe

"The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

• Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy.
• All movement in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
• Celestia is expandable. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that's not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects." (Link)

Open Source GIS Software

Actually there is a ton of free GIS software out there, but I've found QGIS to be the best of the bunch:

"Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a powerful and user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, Windows and Android. QGIS supports vector, raster, and database formats. QGIS is licensed under the GNU Public License. "

Features:

• Direct viewing of vector and raster data in different formats and projections. Supported formats include: 
• Mapping and interactive exploration of spatial data. Tools include: 
• Create, edit and export spatial data 
• Perform spatial analysis,  
• Publish your map on the internet using QGIS Server or the "Export to Mapfile" capability (requires UMN MapServer) 
• Adapt QGIS to your needs through the extensible plugin architecture.

EDvent Calendar: Day 21 (The final frontier)

If your students like exploring the infinity of space, introduce them to these three programmes. All open source and free for everyone to install.

Stellarium

1. Stellarium... "is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go." Available for Windows/Mac/Linux.

Celestia

2. Celestia. The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. Available for Windows/Mac/Linux.

3. Virtual Moon Atlas. "Software for Moon observation and survey. Let you visualize the real Moon aspect at every time. Also help to study any lunar formations using feature database and pictures library" Available for Windows/Mac/Linux.

To infinity and beyond.

World Wind: Open Source Google Earth?

World Wind is by no means as full-featured as Google Earth, but if you just want to play Atlas and spin the world around, it's a good option. To install under Linux, look for worldwind in the software channels, but the java version of the software runs on any platform. Best thing about it is that the software is open source and the imagery is not owned and copyrighted by [insert giant corporation here]. There are some nice Java webstart demos here too: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/java/demos/ showing things like loading .kml files, mapping elevations, annotations, geo-mapped photos, earthquake information etc.

Four cool tools for studying astronomy

Two of my favourite applications when it comes to studying the stars are Celestia and Stellarium. The former allows one to fly through the solar system following planets, asteroids or satellites, while the latter allows one to place oneself anywhere in the world to watch the constellations travel across the sky above. Stellarium also allows one to pause, fast-forward or rewind time to see what the starts do. There are some very cool videos on youtube that showcase what these two programmes can do:

• Stellarium
• Celestia

There is also an increasing number of applications for Android that help people learn more about the night sky while standing in their front yard as well. Google Sky Map is great. If you want to find where Mars is, type in Mars and it will point an arrow in the right direction until you find it (video). Satellite AR is something I've only just discovered but it is no less impressive. It uses augmented reality to overlay the night sky with images and trajectories of satellites passing overhead. Here's a demo of it in action:

Wikitude AR

Okay, so here's something I've been playing with for a while: Wikitude AR. I first discovered it 18 months ago and have been working on integrating it with what we do at Albany Senior High School. It's augmented reality, which revolves around placing information into the landscape. The content is accessible with the use of a smartphone and mashes up GPS, 3G or wifi and a phone's compass. My history class had some fun placing information about the 1951 Waterfront Strike around the waterfront in Auckland. If you're interested in learning more, you can go there, and with the help of Wikitude AR learn as much as you like. Because the content is wiki-based and placed into the landscape, the only limit is a teacher's (or a class's) imagination. Here's a video of Wikitude AR being used around the Waitemata Harbour:
P.S. the bird you can hear calling in the video is the pukeko; a tenacious Aotearoa wading bird.