Astroblog: Charon Surface Texture for Celestia

Sunday, August 02, 2015

Charon Surface Texture for Celestia

Charon simulated in Celestia with the Charon Global Map used to generate the Charon texture. Click to embiggen

The Charon Global Map has just been released to complement the Pluto Global Map, so I resized it (1024x512) and converted it to a 72 DPI png to use as a texture for Celestia.

You need to copy the texture file Charon.png to the textures/medres folder in the Celestia directory, then edit the solarsys.ssc file in the data folder (make a backup copy first) to replace the texture name in the Pluto definition section with that of the new texture, save it and you are good to go (just as you did for Pluto).

"Charon:Pluto I:134340 Pluto I:1978 P 1" "Sol/Pluto"
{
    Texture "Charon.*"
    SpecularTexture "charon-lok-spec.*"
    SpecularColor            [ 0.135 0.12 0.08 ]
    SpecularPower             9.5

Now I have to learn how to do XYZ or SPICE orbits to add in the New Horizons flyby. And also fix the north polar alignments.

Labels: celestia, Dwarf Planet, Pluto