Celestia

Celestia is a sophisticated program that can be daunting to learn, particularly in the classroom. Consequently, in 2004, work began on a set of educational lesson-plans that would facilitate the visual power of Celestia to be used at home or in the classroom. Today, the Celestia Educational Activities series is complete and is updated yearly with the latest in astronomical facts and graphics. The Series represents 12 detailed tours of space to over 400 destinations. They are ideal for users of all ages, for home or school computer lab use in grades 7 - 12, and in introductory college courses as a valuable tool in the visualization and understanding of Astronomy and of our Universe. Celestia's Educational Activities were created by Frank Gregorio, an award-winning high school teacher who is part of the Celestia development forum. The Activities and required files are 2.8 GB in size and are available on this site as a 2-CD set or DVD, that can be purchased for a nominal fee for home or school use (see link below). The Activities can also be downloaded individually for free as installation zip files from Celestia's educational website (see the link below for further details). Note, however, that installation of the free education set takes considerable time, and is provided primarily for use at home. We request that if you are intending to use the Activity series for education, please purchase one of the school licenses at very nominal fees. Each Activity Flight Plan is read independently by users/students at their own pace and employs hundreds of add-on files developed by Celestia's professional volunteers to teach Astronomy in beautiful detail, while providing a comprehensive written explanation of the astronomical wonders users will be seeing. Each Activity takes you on a different journey through the Celestia universe and includes a written student Worksheet to complete and submit for grading, plus detailed line-by-line instructions on how to control the spaceship to travel to places of interest. In several ...