Celestia is a free 3D astronomy program for Windows, Mac OS X, and GNU/Linux. Created by Chris Laurel, it is licensed under the GNU General Public License. The program, based on the Hipparcos Catalogue, allows the user to display objects ranging in scale from artificial satellites to entire galaxies in three dimensions using OpenGL. Unlike most planetarium software, the user is free to travel about the Universe. NASA and ESA have used Celestia, but it should not be confused with ESA's catalog of celestial data, Celestia 2000.
Space art is a general term for art emerging from knowledge and ideas associated with outer space, both as a source of inspiration and as a means for visualizing and promoting space travel. Whatever the stylistic path, the artist is generally attempting to communicate ideas somehow related to space, often including appreciation of the infinite variety and vastness which surrounds us.
Space artists may work closely with space scientists and engineers to help them to visualize and develop their scientific and technological concepts making the dream of space exploration a reality. Other forms of pictorial space art bring the viewer to inner visions inspired directly or otherwise by the fruits of the expanding vision of Humanity. Some aspects of such art pay visual homage to outer space, popular ideas of life on other worlds including alien visitation visions, dream symbology, psychedelic imagery and other influences on contemporary visionary art.
Astronomical art, largely an outgrowth of the artistic standards of Bonestell, is an aspect of space art whose primary emphasis is in giving the viewer visual impressions of alien and exotic places in the Cosmos. As an Astronomical artist one should have a sense of why the lighting, sky color, even your chosen landscape surroundings appear as they do, and how a drastic change in a specific condition as on other worlds could alter the scene dramatically. One should have a reasonable 'grounding' in science, the nature of the sky and weather, and Geology for knowing the Earth as well as Astronomy for knowing the heavens. Such artists share with every other conceivable creative expression the vast arena containing what can be called Space Art. Wikipedia
