25 Years of Celestia
Publish date:
We are running a promotion for Celestia PLUS to celebrate 25 years of Celestia. Scroll down to learn more.
The first version of Celestia was released by Chris Laurel in on February 26, 2001 (based on tag in commit history). This year marks 25 years since the first release of Celestia. To celebrate this milestone, we are sharing some images from the history of Celestia. Note that the version names listed here are used by the original Celestia project for desktop and are different from mobile Celestia or Celestia on Microsoft Store.
Celestia 1.0.7 (Released 2001-04-30)
Celestia 1.2.5 (Released 2003-01-08)
Celestia 1.4.1 (Released 2006-02-16)
Celestia 1.6.4 (Released 2023-11-04)
Modern Celestia based on Celestia 1.7.0's code
Tau Boötis Ab in Celestia 1.0.3 (credit: Planetkid32)
Tau Boötis Ab in Celestia 1.6.2 (credit: Planetkid32)
Over the years, Celestia has been ported to multiple platforms, most notably mobile platforms. Celestia was made available on iOS/iPadOS on July 7, 2020. The first version of Celestia for Android was released on Google Play on September 3, 2020.
You can still obtain history versions of Celestia from Celestia Archive Repository and try it yourself!
Evolution of Celestia's Icon
The Celestia icon has evolved through three distinct eras, reflecting the software's journey toward astronomical realism. It began as a minimalist red moon orbiting a blue planet, a symbolic nod to its early mechanics. As the simulator matured across multiple platforms, these abstract shapes were replaced by a detailed rendering of Jupiter and Io. Finally, in 2016, the modern identity featuring the ringed majesty of Saturn was designed by FarGetaNik.
Icons of Celestia (from top to bottom, left to right: 1.0, Windows, macOS, Linux (GTK))
You can get the recreation of 1.0 icon in your Celestia as an add-on at Celestia Version 1.0 Icon Planet.
We also recreated the classic macOS icon using a render directly from the latest version of Celestia.
Available as an alternative icon to Celestia PLUS subscribers on iOS/iPadOS in a future update
Add-ons
Add-on support has always been one of the most beloved features of Celestia. Shortly after Celestia's launch on mobile, the application gained built-in add-on management and download capabilities. The first celestia.mobi add-on was added on October 17, 2020. As of now, there are more than 2,000 add-ons hosted on celestia.mobi, amounting to a total of 26GB of data. You can also submit your own add-ons to the Celestia Add-on Validator.
Celestia PLUS
To celebrate 25 years of Celestia, we are offering discounts and free trials on Celestia PLUS subscription for new users. Starting Feb 26 (Pacific Standard Time) if you have not tried Celestia PLUS yet, ensure that you are on the latest version of Celestia and open this link to get the discount or free trial (On iOS/iPadOS/macOS, the weekly subscription might be incorrectly showing a per day price but it is actually the per week price).
We have recently added better support for checking add-on updates for Celestia PLUS subscribers. In the next update we will add easy access for add-ons from the info page of an object so that you can browse add-ons that are directly related to the objects you are viewing. We are planning to add more capabilities in the future.