Here you can find information about Copernic Space Simulator, and its latest improvements

Copernic Space Simulator is a freeware. It may be distributed freely on the condition you notify the author. The author is not responsable for any malfunctionalities in the program and for any bugs or differences between reality and the software.

Copernic is a real-time simulator of the Solar System and its surroundings. The application allows the loading of 87,475 stars, 168 Deep Sky Objects, 500 trans-neptunes, 200 asteroids, 400 comets and 30 planetary moons at any given moment. Despite these restrictions, the actual asteroid and outer solar system objects databases that come with the program include 10,986 asteroids and 755 trans-neptunes. The reason for not being all of them displayed is purely due to memory concerns.

V1.0

3D movement.
The transneptune objects, centaurs, comets and asteroids are displayed separately in order to improve the performance of the application.

V1.1

Some modifications in the algorithm that computes the 3d positions.
Planetary rings of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Comet tails.
Milky way.

V1.2

Planetary trails off.
Added extrasolar planets.
The possibility to show or hide the names of the stars and the deep space objects.
Added textures for class O, B, A, M star.
Pioneer probe added for fun reasons.
Upsilon Andromeda added in the catalog.
Some keyboard modifications:
--- instead of 's' now we use 'o' to stop the movement.
--- key 'm' used to display or/and hide the deep space objects names.
--- key 's' is now used to display or/and hisde the star names.
--- key 'f' is used for fullscreen mode but there is a problem so DON'T use it.
The Messier objects and some NGC objects are shown in the pollar projection map.

V1.3

Added the black hole around star 61Cyg. It is fully animated and gives the impression that it 'feeds' from the stellar atmosphere. See the last image in the list.
Because of other countries' demands, the interface is now only in English.
Added lists of Solar System objects and all the Messier objects. The purpose is to see information on the desired object. The data are linked to professional webpages so that every person interested in astronomy should get quality information.
Added Earth atmosphere.

V1.4

Eliminated a bug regarding the Moon label.
Errors are now shown in English.
Added an additional option regarding the view of comets and asteroid in high detail or just label.
The menu is now included in the main window. Use 'h' to show or hide the menu.
Online data on Solar System and Messier objects.

V1.5

GoTo function for planets within our Solar System.
Dynamic rendering of the planetary textures and bodies - to increase the speed of the program and the frame rendering time.
New implementation of the planetary position algorithm.
Computed Moon's topocentric position instead of the old geocentrical one.
Redefined Saturn's, Jupiter's and Neptune's planetary rings.
Redefined orbital elements for Jupiter's and Saturn's satellites.
Increased the distance to the clip plane. The small distance led to the disappearance of some objects in the far side of the viewport.

V1.6

The code has been entirely rewritten in C# using DirectX as a graphics engine.
Some new features were added such as lens flares and 3D planetary maps.
A whole new way of navigating through the Solar System was introduced by adding the 2D Solar System Map in Static and Follow Mode.
Ever needed to define your custom objects? Sought an object (a space station or a space probe) at a certain position in space? All these are now possible thanks to the customobjects file which allows you to define your own objects.
The user interface has been improved with the possibility to take a screenshot of your application display image.
Several changes regarding the algorithms used to compute planetary positions were also made.
The Black Hole present in version 1.5 was however removed. If you still want to look at it, feel free to use that version.

Download application

Software presented at the Romanian Academy Days
Timisoara May 25th 2005

"Written under the OpenGL environment and using C/C++, Copernic is a beautiful Romanian amateur astronomer achievement". Ovidiu Vaduvescu Romanian astronomer.