Celestias galaxies are ugly, dim, grey blobs. How can I get colorful galaxies that look like the real things?
The real things are dim, grey blobs. ( Catalogs of additional dim, grey blobs for use with Celestia v1.3.0 and later can be found at http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~seb/catalogs.html ) Many of the colorful pictures you’re used to seeing are enhanced by long exposures on sensitive color film. Others are imaginative “false color” combinations of narrow-band CCD images designed to make visible the specific features of interest to the investigator. You can add a colorful object to Celestia by creating a 3DS model with appropriate images as surface textures. Define it as a Nebula in a DSC file. Use the Search command in the Celestia “Development” and “Add-On” forums to find examples.
