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Ever wanted to take a stroll around the solar system? To the nearest star? Cluster? Galaxy? There is an awesome program I found a while ago that lets you do just this in a very realistic 3D simulation of, well, everything we know. Celestia is an open-source galactic simulation program, with accurate placement of almost every star in the galaxy, along with the planets, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft, all modeled and viewable.

It’s a lot of fun to play around with if you’ve ever looked at the night sky with any interest before. You can start at Earth, find a star, click it, and fly to it in one three-second warp motion, with all the stars around you flying by with mathematical precision. The zoom is also fun — start with Earth again, and hold both mouse buttons and pull back all the way to a stunning view of the entire galaxy, and then zoom back in. It puts things in perspective.

It’s a very cool program, I highly reccomend checking it out.