I am Kyle's self-indulgence

I just found through Lifehacker.com the amazing program Celestia, a fully interactive three-dimensional model of space's celestial bodies. It's like Google Universe (well, the known universe at least).

You can browse stars by proximity, brightness, and the presence of orbiting planets. Once you have selected a star you can explore all the objects in its system (I recommend starting by exploring our own solar system--I had no idea it contains so many things).

Of course, you can do the same with planets in other solar systems light years away. It really gives a sense of how grand our universe is, and it's a little bit spooky if you let yourself become immersed in this 3-D model.

Here are a few fun games to try. Randomly selecting stars in the visual field, see how long it takes to find one with a planet.

Select and zoom in on stars in your visible field, gradually venturing farther and farther from Sol. See if you can reach the end of our knowledge of the universe. When I did that, I eventually stumbled upon this:

When I first saw that emerge on my screen I was blown away. It's the M 54 globular cluster (in Celestia, under Navigation, select "Goto object..." and type M 54).

Update: I've just discovered you can speed up time to watch the rotation of the planets. Awesome. This program keeps getting better the more I play with it.