You may have heard of Celestia, a great program that lets you leave planet Earth and explore space from beyond. Stellarium is similar to Celestia in some ways, but it allows you to view and explore the night sky exactly as it would appear from any location on Earth. Like Celestia, it is also available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

When you first launch Stellarium, you’ll find that you are looking at the sky as it appears in Paris, France. If you are located in Paris, then you’re all set. However, chances are that you are not. Fortunately, changing your location is easy.

You can either press the Location window button in the menu bar on the left side of the screen, or press the F6 key. You’ll then see the location window.  You can select your location in a few different ways.

Once in the location window, you can select your location by clicking on the map, searching for your location, or entering your location co-ordinates.  If you have a decimal latitude/longitude for your location, you will have to convert your location to degrees, minutes, and seconds.  If you have entered your exact co-ordinates, select a name for your location and click the Add to list button. You may also want to click the Use as default checkbox.

If you’re using this during the day, you’ll probably want to advance the time of day to nighttime.  There are buttons to navigate through time on the right side of the bottom navigation bar.  Just click the Increase time speed button (or press L on your keyboard) a few times to get things moving.  Then click the Set normal time rate button (or press K on your keyboard).

Another way to move through time is to jump to a particular date and time rather than fast forwarding or rewinding.  Click the Date/time window button in the left navigation bar (or press the F5 key on your keyboard).  You can use this feature to advance to certain days when you know a celestial event is taking place that is visible from the surface of Earth.

On the left side of the bottom navigation bar, you’ll see options for displaying constellations.  You can enable Constellation lines (or C on the keyboard), Constellation labels (or V on the keyboard), and enable Constellation art (or R on the keyboard).

You can also click on objects in the sky to find out what they are.  If there is a certain object you wish to view but are having trouble locating it, just hit ctrl-F on your keyboard and enter the name of the object you want to find.  You can search for stars, planets, or constellations.

You may sometimes find that objects you find with the search function are not always visible, because they are obstructed by the Earth.  If this does happen, you can disable the display of the ground.  There is an option to do this in the bottom navigation bar, or you can press the G key on the keyboard.

Navigating the sky is easy.  Just click and drag with your mouse, to move around or use the arrow keys on your keyboard.  Your mouse wheel allows you to zoom in and out (or press the PgUp/PgDown keys on your keyboard).  You can zoom in on the selected object by pressing the / key on your keyboard.  If you want to restore the zoom to normal, press the \ key.  If you want help on the navigation keys, you can press the F1 key on your keyboard.

Stellarium and Celestia are great programs for exploring space and the night sky.  Do use any other free programs to learn about celestial bodies and constellations?

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Not only does the eclipse finder allow you to find solar and lunar eclipses on Earth, but you can seek eclipses on other planets as well. I found out something really cool when checking out eclipses on Jupiter – because Jupiter is very large and has many moons, solar eclipses are very common.

There are even days when multiple solar eclipses take place on the same day on Jupiter. I found an article about a triple lunar eclipse on Jupiter that Hubble captured back in 2004. I used the eclipse finder to find the day it happened (March 28, 2004) and was able to simulate it.

WIth Celestia you can view celestial events that have taken place in the past or will take place in the future. Events can be viewed as they would have occurred in real-time, or time can be sped up. You can also run slower than real-time, but I don’t find that feature all that useful since most celestial events take place over several hours or years.

There are numerous add-ons and textures available at the Celestia Motherlode. The add-ons provide additional celestial bodies and spacecraft not included by default. The textures provide more detail for planet surfaces, stars, and star systems as well.

If you are viewing the earth, you can enter specific coordinates you want to visit and use the surface view (CTRL-G in windows) to see the night sky as you would from your backyard.

This is a great way to learn where the constellations are and which ones you can see during what time of the year. Celestia is like having a planeterium right on your desktop!

Which apps do you use for astronomy and space simulation?

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With such a huge product base, simply browsing Amazon has almost become a tedious job. There are the lists of “What’s Hot”, but the interface is more functional than enticing.

Therefore, allow me to introduce Amazon Windowshop.

Simply put, Amazon Windowshop is a virtual portal designed to display “What’s Hot” on Amazon.com interactively. Here, text links and preview buttons are nowhere to be found. Instead you are presented with unique “tabs” that display new and popular music, films, book and games.

This service is very simple to use and can be navigated using just the keyboard. Instead of using your mouse to click links, you are encouraged to select from categories such as “New Music This Tuesday” which, as you may have guessed, displays all the popular music releases, “Bestselling Video Games”, charting that particular month’s sales and pre-orders and even suggests bands/acts you should listen to in their “Music Artists We Think You Should Hear” section.

If, like in the screenshot above, you select the “Bestselling Video Games” section, you will be presented with the top ten best-sellers in that category. Each game will feature its official trailer and plays automatically so be careful if you are checking this out in an environment that wouldn’t lend well to Banjo Kazooie’s catchphrases!

Inside the music sections, you will be treated to a thirty second snippet off a track from that album with the options to buy said album on either CD or digitally from their MP3 store. The book section surprises, it includes a voice-over reading the synopsis of the book but Amazon haven’t yet incorporated their “Search Inside” feature.

Amazon has made use of Adobe’s Flash Player and have also tapped into their S3 service so they can deliver high quality images, video and audio clips quickly to the user. The service is updated real-time and provides complete integration with Amazon’s commerce store meaning if you like what you see/hear/feel/think, you can travel to the product site and purchase to your hearts content. There is no word on whether they will introduce the “Search Inside” service but incorporating it into their Flash interface shouldn’t be too much hassle for their developers.

Currently, Windowshop is only available for US audiences and there are no indications as to whether it will be ported to their worldwide user base. I think the real question is whether Windowshop can be incorporated into Amazon’s main portal, allowing users to choose their own way to browse the store.

What do you think of Windowshop? Do you see yourself using it? Is this the future of Amazon? Or is it just a sales gimmick?

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Cooliris’ party piece which is really very impressive, is the endless 3D photo wall. Trust me, after using the 3D wall, regular browsing will never suffice again. Suppose you were searching for something on Google Images, only 20 results will be displayed on a page at any time. By using the 3D wall, you can view all of the results at once.

Have a look at the screenshots below: Search results are displayed as a “wall” and by dragging the slider at the bottom of the screen, you can swiftly browse through all of the photos easily.

Clicking on any one will bring up a larger version and a caption (if any). Also, its source will be displayed at the bottom of the photo, along with a link to that page. Next to that, there is an option to send messages to friends if you manage to find anything you’d like to share.

If you want to sit back and enjoy all the photos, click on the full-screen slideshow icon at the bottom left-hand side then hit ‘Play’. The slideshow icon will change to one which resembles a 3D wall and clicking on it will bring you back to the wall.

Unfortunately, Cooliris will not work on every site with photos, only certain Cooliris-enabled sites like Flickr, Picasa, Google, DeviantART, Yahoo!, SmugMug, Photobucket, Facebook and MySpace. The next time when you’re browsing through your friend’s photo album on Facebook, hit the Cooliris button and you’ll be instantly rewarded with the photos on the 3D wall – no more clicking on ‘Next’.

Cooliris will also work with videos from YouTube. It arranges the videos as it does with photos. Be warned, browsing YouTube with Cooliris is very addictive since it shows you all the search results next to each other. It’s very tempting to just sit there and watch all of them! Granted, YouTube isn’t the same if you can’t read the comments of others or go through the ‘Related Videos’ – two essential features which is missing from Cooliris.

“3D shopping” was implemented in the latest version of Cooliris. A few of the top online shopping destinations like Amazon, Macy’s and Walmart have hopped onto the Cooliris bandwagon and provided their patrons with an easier way to browse through their products. Clicking on a product’s photo will reveal its price, a short description and a link to the product’s page.

In my book, Cooliris is a definite keeper. Assuming that your computer has sufficient processing power and memory to allow Cooliris to operate properly, using should be a pleasure.

Cooliris is available as a plugin for Firefox and Safari on Mac OS X; and for Firefox and Internet Explorer on Windows. But that’s not all, Cooliris is now available for the iPhone!

Do let us know how well it works on the iPhone. We’re eager to hear how much Cooliris can improve browsing on a such a small device.

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Fortunately, this is help for your bogged-down drive. WinDirStat, one of the least appealingly named pieces of freeware out there, is also one of the most useful. The program rapidly indexes your entire hard drive, creates a visual map of every file, and helps you delete the stuff you don’t need.

Once you start up WinDirStat and select the drive you want to search (you can also select “all drives”), the indexing process begins. Depending on how large your drive is and how much data you have, this CAN be a lengthy process, but compared to some other indexing programs, WinDirStat does a remarkably efficient job. The folders are then organize in a standard drill-down interface. Each one has an indicator of how large it is and how much of its parent (or “higher level”) folder it takes up. This interface alone is enough to make the software worth the download.

Beyond the complex file manager, the most noticeable feature of WinDirStat is their visualization system. Check out my “C” drive’s image below:

You’ll immediately notice there are a number of colors and most of the blocks are different sizes. This is because WinDirStat marks every type of file (determined by file extension) with a unique color. The larger the file, the larger the block. Also, each visible section is part of the same folder. The column on the right, for instance, is the system folder and contains two giant, blue pagefiles (one is the regular pagefile and the other is the hibernation file).

Navigating around the image is fairly intuitive once you understand how it’s laid out. Left clicking snaps the file manager to the file or folder in question. Right clicking on any section brings up a contextual menu including the ability to zoom in as well as the ability to select the parent folder.

At the top of the screen there are several toolbar options:

From left to right they are:

• Open – for selecting a drive to index
• Refresh – this can repopulate the map with new changes
• Open Item – opens the selected item
• Copy Path – a very useful tool to copy the path (address within the computer) of a file or folder
• Explorer – opens the selection in Windows Explorer
• Command Prompt – opens a command prompt window (pretty handy)
• Refresh Selected – repopulates the map of the selection with any new changes
• Delete to Recycle Bin – equivalent to hitting the delete key in Windows Explorer
• Delete (instant) – immediately deletes the selection, bypassing the Recycle Bin
• Properties – Shows the properties of the selection
• Zoom In/Out – Enables zooming around the graphic interface (this will highlight the enlarged area in the file manager
• Help – opens WinDirStat help

There are more options in WinDirStat, but these particular ones are those that I have found most useful in cleaning out undesirable files. One thing to keep in mind is that while WinDirStat may allow you to access any file on your computer, be careful what you delete. Some of the files will be large and have names you are not familiar with. Deleting them directly might cause irreparable damage to your PC. I suggest Googling anything you aren’t sure about before you delete it.
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If you’ve used WinDirStat, what are some things you use it for? Personally, I use it to quickly navigate my iTunes library because old podcasts sometimes get hung up in the labyrinthic file system it uses.

(By) Jimmy Rogers is a biology major at George Mason University and an avid freelance tech blogger. Check out his blog, Mason Tech Beat.

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