Solar system body relative position viewer

[Bucky1379]

Hi

Can anyone suggest a program that would allow me to easily see the relative positions of all of the planets (and maybe their moons) and the major asteroids from a viewpoint above the planetary plane (looking down) and be able to show them at any set time/date?

I just figure that this would be an easy to understand way to anticipate and plan for future oppositions, etc. and even further, if it was possible to move forward and backward in time while viewing, it would be a big help in understanding their movements relative to each other. I even figure that it would make it easier to visualise their gravitational effects on each other as they pass each other.

At the moment I can use something like Stellarium to to see the positions in the sky from the Earth and it will also tell me the magnitude and distance from Earth but my brain still can't really easily visualise how close they are against the scale of the solar system and how they are moving relative to each other right now and how their relative positions will be in a month or a year or whatever.

I am sure that there is something out there that can show me these things easily but my searching for, downloading, installing, learning etc hasn't produced a a satisfactory result yet.

Can anyone pont me in the right direction?

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

The program you want is called Celestia. I don't think there is a better program that does it, especially seeing as it a free download.

http://www.shatters.net/celestia/

I'd suggest you copy the help menu and past it into wordpad and then print it out.

[Bucky1379]

Thanks Paul for the quick reply.

I had quickly looked at it but obviously didn't spend enough time learning what it could do.

Now I know, I'll invest more time in working out how it can help me.

Thanks a lot again.

It is discouraging trying to work out the answers to the millions of questions that come up learning about astronomy from first principals and help from people who have already worked it out really saves a lot of time that I would prefer to spend looking through my scope and/or doing things with my 5 year old son.

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

Your welcome.

Its been a while since I've played with it. It might be a good idea to download the documentation. I've just downloaded it and its much more comprehensive than the help file from the old version I have