cool program I just installed it. One quick question. How do you fly around. Do you need a mouse to move? I figured I could use my touchpad on my laptop but I can rotate and thats it.
You use your arrow keys to move. I find using the 10-key on the keyboard works best, because you can use them to rotate your field of view as well.
a = increase your speed
z = to decrease speed.
If you are in the solar system, you can use the number keys above the letters to target individual planets.
1=mercury, 2=venus, 3=earth, etc.
h = selct SOL as target.
c = center target in view
a right-click on a planet will show satellites and other stuff
g = take you to whatever is targeted
if you want to immediately go to saturn, press 6g. you'll zip right there.
function keys control velocity in addition to using "a" and "b".
f1 = stop
f2 = 1 km/sec
f3= 1000 km/sec
f4= light speed (i.e., c)
f5= 10c
f6 = 1 astronomical unit/sec i.e., 1 AU/sec
f7=1 light year/sec
So, if you want to go to saturn the "slow" way, limiting yourself to the speed of light, press 6, c, f4 (6 targets saturn, c makes the targeted object the center of your screen, and f4 accelerates you to the speed of light) You'll have about an hour and a half to wait until you get there.
The 'h' key is important because it will help you get home if you go extra-solar. Finding earth from another galaxy is pretty much impossible without the 'h' key to help you orient. it will also help you because if you click your mouse on a star to see which one it is, celestia will 'forget' that you're still in the solar system so the keys to quickly locate planets won't work. press 'h', and using the numbers to select planets will work again.
There's lots of other stuff you can do, like go to 'celestia motherload' and download/install new,higher quality graphics files for planets. You can also download real and fictional starships. the models of starships are really impressive.
I have documented a couple of fun 'trips' on my website. Go to http://www.zeugmaweb.net/trips/ and select the Spacedock link to see some really cool stuff.
If you need other help, drop me a line. Celestia is the coolest program I've ever played with.