Imagine being able to give users, students or teachers the ability to take control of their own "hyperdrive" spacecraft and fly to any part of our amazing universe they wish, at any time in history. Navigate through a vista of galaxies, stars, nebula, planets, moons, asteroids, comets and spacecraft. Envision their excitement in hearing realistic sounds present at places they visit. Then, consider being provided a comprehensive written Astronomy lesson in what they were seeing and hearing!

Welcome to Celestia Educational Flight Plan Activities for 2017/2018! Completely revised to utilize the graphic power of the latest version of Celestia, these lessons incorporate new advances to our knowledge of the universe, and our solar system within it. They provide users the ability to personally navigate above the surfaces of stars, visit rotating black holes, fly into nebula, pass through Saturn's rings, follow dozens of spacecraft as they make history, examine all of our 8 planets and 5 dwarf planets from orbit, dock with a giant space station of the future, witness erupting volcanoes on Io, study the life of stars, or consider the formation of our moon billions of years ago. Celestia Educational Activities represent 11 detailed tours of space to over 400 exciting destinations.

The main program and all Celesta Educational Activities are available for free from the links listed below. They are provided as zipped files totaling over 10 GB when installed, and must be downloaded, unzipped and installed sequentially.

Note:
These Activities must be used with Celestia161-ED loaded on a Windows PC only, running Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or 10. They will not work with earlier Celestia versions, will not work on Apple computers (yet) and will NOT run properly on many laptops or tablet computers, unless they have higher-end video graphics installed! If you have an older version of Celestia-ED on your computer, we strongly suggest you save any specific "extras" files you wish, then uninstall it before installing this 2017 version. If you have the default "Celestia" program on your computer, however, you may leave it there, if you wish. Celestia161-ED will install into a different folder.

Each journey consists of a comprehensive set of add-on files, plus an Activity Flight Plan document written in MS Word format and a Student Worksheet that can be printed and completed for a grade. The Activity document will guide you through the complete journey and gives you all instructions for launching and operating Celestia161-ED. Activity journeys are comprehensive and range from 1 hour to 4 hours per journey. They represent over 40 hours of space exploration and are ideal for home or school computer lab use in grades 7 - 12 (ages 12 - 18) and in introductory college courses in Astronomy.

These Activities require the use of Microsoft Word 2003 or later, or LibreOffice. LibreOffice is a free word processing program available by clicking here.

Directions for Installation:

1. Download the Letter to Users & Educators for 2017 from the files listed below and read it for further guidance on installation and use of the Activities.

1A. Uninstall prior versions of Celestia-ED (see above note).

2. Download the main program setup file named Celestia161-ED-WIN_setup.zip listed below to your Desktop or Downloads folder. Right-Click on that zip file and select "Extract" or "Extract All". A menu will appear, asking where you want the files unzipped. Choose your desktop and unzip. A new folder will appear named "Celestia161-ED-WIN_setup". Open it and you will find 3 files. Double-click on the setup file named Celestia161-ED-WIN_setup.exe, and installation will begin. Answer yes to all questions asked.

A menu will appear indicating that the program will be installed into a new default location located at "C:\MyPrograms\Celestia161-ED". We suggest you do not change that location, but you can change it if you wish. Continue the menus and click "install". The program and some of its files will be installed into "C:\MyPrograms\Celestia161-ED" on your computer.

3. Next, download any or all of the 11 Celestia Educational Activity zip files available below. Select one and unzip it directly into the same Celestia161-ED directory that you placed the main program. Allow files to overwrite, if asked.

4. Once all downloads and installs have been completed, read the "Quick-Summary.docx" document in the main Celestia161-ED folder, to guide you in getting started on your educational journey. If you are a teacher, open and read the Letter to Users and Educators 2017 for detailed instructions on how to use Celestia161-ED in a school or classroom. You will find it in the main program directory. Also, note a 3rd document in the main directory named, "Celestia161-ED-Users Guide.docx". It will tell you in detail how to operate every aspect and keystroke of this amazing program.

Enjoy.

For questions, comments or further inquiries, contact Frank Gregorio at: fsgregs@comcast.net