Back when Propellerhead were a lad he was convinced that by the time he grew up (though to be fair that has yet to happen), he would zoom off to work each day in a rocket jet pack and take holidays on the Moon. Owning a jet pack is theoretically possible but the closest any of us (for that read only the filthy rich…) are ever going to get to the Moon is a sub-orbital hop on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic or sign up to become an astronaut.

Maybe you can’t go into space for real but you can get a taste of what it must have been like to be Captain Kirk with a freeware program called Celestia. Think of it as a sort of Google Earth in reverse, a real-time 3D space simulator with a database of more than 100,000 stares and almost 100 objects in our own solar system.

You can add more bits of the universe as you go along. Zoom across galaxies or get up close and personal with the Hubble Telescope and the faster and more graphically blessed your PC is the better it looks! For more down to earth tips and tweaks head over to the archive at PCTopTips

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