All this hubbub about Mars coming so close to Earth has got me feeling interstellar. It’s actually pretty cool to look up and see this startling bright orange dot in the sky and realize what it is.

But if looking’s not enough for you, you can always just go there. A free, opensource program called Celestia allows the user to inspect heavenly bodies without that skeezy feeling or anonimous credit card activity. You can zoom around the galaxy at will and pan, rotate, and navigate around 3d rednerings of stars, asteroids, planets, star clusters, and other spacely notables.

The program is free and runs on Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, Linux, and OSX.
Get it here.

Thanks to Steve for the link.