Alienorum v1.0.1 for Win/x86-64

Alienorum 1.0.1

Our cross-platform planetarium / space / world building software, including the following features:

• Internal catalog of over 130,000 stars;
• Includes definitions for solar system planets, moons, asteroids, and comets;
• Realtime 3D Positions of stars, including proper motions, and of orbiting bodies with full orbital parameters;
• GPU-powered OpenGL rendering;
• Produces views of sky and space from anywhere inside or outside our solar system, including views from satellites and views from the surfaces of other planets, moons, asteroids, and exoplanets;
• Spaceflight feature with time dilation and a warp speed mode, coupled with tracking ability to facilitate flybys of moons, planets, stars, star clusters, and galaxies;
• Professional ephemerides for accurate (within a few minutes) timing of solar and lunar eclipses;
• Automatic sync of exoplanet data from NASA's Exoplanet Archive*;
• Automatic sync of artificial satellite orbits from NORAD via CelesTrak*;
• Spaceship mode with selectable local, ecliptic, ICRF, and galactic frames;
• Latitude and longitude controls, with preset Earth cities, time zones, and points of interest on the Moon and on other planets.
• Editing of celestial objects including fictional texture, bump, and ring generation, atmospheric composition, and estimated surface temperatures/pressures;
• Full-sky map and sun clock modes;
• Snapshot functionality;
• Menu system, easily toggled by pressing F2, that displays keyboard shortcuts for all menu items;
• Red light mode for preserving dark adapted vision;
• White background mode for printing of saved snapshots;
• A rich set of themes named after constellations;
• Compatibility with Celestia's SSC format* for loading community-made fictional universes.

This release fixes some bugs that never should have gone out in v1.0.0 including:

• Numbered Bayer stars (e.g. Tau 1 Eridani) now show the correct designation (e.g. τ1) in Bayer mode (Shift+F) instead of random letters and numbers as before;
• Buttons at bottom of system explorer (E) now work properly on the selected item instead of a random star;
• Local system planets are now ensured visible in white background (W) mode, and flares are now shown in this mode with a cap on the flare intensity;
• Night side is now rendered as a shaded version of the day texture if no night texture is available (e.g. Mars, Moon) in Sun Clock mode ($);
• Pressing 1 in Sky Map mode (\) no longer brings back the S panel, N panel, or other elements not typically wanted for this mode;
• Epsilon Indi once again shows both red dwarf companions in system explorer (E) when visiting (O) the star system.

This release also adds a new feature: when labeling stars by Bayer (Shift+F), Flamsteed (F), or Gould (Shift+G) identifiers, there is now a dropdown in the S panel allowing the user to filter star labels by constellation.

*Alienorum is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with NASA, NORAD, CelesTrak, or the Celestia project. 'Celestia' is a trademark of its respective owners. Support for .ssc files is provided for compatibility purposes only.

Alienorum v1.0.0 for Windows

Alienorum 1.0

The initial formal release of our cross-platform planetarium / space / world building software, including the following features:

• Internal catalog of over 130,000 stars;
• Includes definitions for solar system planets, moons, asteroids, and comets;
• Realtime 3D Positions of stars, including proper motions, and of orbiting bodies with full orbital parameters;
• OpenGL rendering;
• Produces views of sky and space from anywhere inside or outside our solar system, including views from satellites and views from the surfaces of other planets, moons, asteroids, and exoplanets;
• Spaceflight feature with time dilation and a warp speed mode, coupled with tracking ability to facilitate flybys of moons, planets, stars, star clusters, and galaxies;
• Professional ephemerides for accurate (within a few minutes) timing of solar and lunar eclipses;
• Automatic sync of exoplanet data from NASA's Exoplanet Archive*;
• Automatic sync of artificial satellite orbits from NORAD via CelesTrak*;
• Spaceship mode with selectable local, ecliptic, ICRF, and galactic frames;
• Latitude and longitude controls, with preset Earth cities, time zones, and points of interest on the Moon and on other planets.
• Editing of celestial objects including fictional texture, bump, and ring generation, atmospheric composition, and estimated surface temperatures/pressures;
• Full-sky map and sun clock modes;
• Snapshot functionality;
• Menu system, easily toggled by pressing F2, that displays keyboard shortcuts for all menu items;
• Red light mode for preserving dark adapted vision;
• White background mode for printing of saved snapshots;
• A rich set of themes named after constellations;
• Compatibility with Celestia's SSC format* for loading community-made fictional universes.

*Alienorum is an independent project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with NASA, NORAD, CelesTrak, or the Celestia project. 'Celestia' is a trademark of its respective owners. Support for .ssc files is provided for compatibility purposes only.

Alienorum v0.3.0 for Windows

Mostly small fixes in this release. Key enhancements include:

• Time zones functionality, with international-aware DST rules;
• Rings on exoplanets, where likely to occur;
• Rings visible from planet surface;
• Consistency across dialogs: N panel now constructed in a similar way to S panel;
• Star naming fixes and duplicate star prevention;
• Stellar radius estimates are more reliable;
• No crash when catalog present only as .gz;
• Atmospheric haze does not extend impossibly far into space;
• Airless bodies remain airless;

Alienorum v0.2.0 for Windows

Several new features in this release including:

• Comet loader similar to the existing asteroid loader, plus four comets loaded by default (Halley, Hale-Bopp, Hyakutake, McNaught), and realistic rendering of the coma and tail;
• Planets and moons cast shadows on one another, and planet rings cast shadows on the planet, meaning eclipses work now, both lunar and solar, and on other planets also;
• Stellar variability (intrinsic only, no eclipsing binary variables yet, so Mira brightens and dims but Algol still appears steady);
• Correct phase-dependent magnitudes of objects like the Moon and the Galilean moons;
• Bug fixes for lava worlds - take a look at Janssen in the 55 Cancri system for a good example;
• Auto-generated fictional skyline showing terrain on the horizon;
• Corrected right ascension coordinates when viewing from planets, based on the planet's own equinox angle;
• Flashier names for two of the view modes: Spaceship and Planetfall;
• Texture generation fixes - buttons are more intuitive now and the resolution can be custom specified through a text box;
• Small fixes to star labels and Milky Way band.

Alienorum v0.1.3 for Windows

Alienorum 0.1.3 for Windows

Got a couple new treats in this one. Galaxies are now included, and a Milky Way shape that was hand drawn from an actual composite of the galactic plane and converted to RA/Decl coordinates. Also - we have a snapshot feature!!! Press F12 at any time to write a .png file of the current screen to the snapshots/ folder. This feature includes all labels, dialogs, menus, the mouse cursor, so make sure to turn off anything you don't want before pressing F12.