Ben, or one of his commenters, recently pointed his readers to Celestia, a free space exploration program.  Since I happen to be one of them (his readers, not space exploration programs), I took the opportunity to download the software.  I didn’t do much with it, but I thought it was a neat piece of software for space simulation. 
    Our science teacher today asked me if I could help her put together something for a look at astronomy that she’s doing next quarter.  I recommended Celestia and proceeded to figure out if we could get it onto our school computers.  We can.
    Then I tried to figure out some of the more useful student features.  It didn’t take me long to find out that Celestia is a BIG DEAL.  This site is a ginormous collection of resources, all free, that you can use to customize Celestia.  More better (Yeah, I said "more better."  And I’m an English teacher.  But it really is that good.), some really smart folks have created some really handy educational tours for free consumption and use with students.  Very, very cool.   There are geographical tours as well as lessons on terraforming and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  Amazing and really well done stuff.
    One note — if you do want to use the educational resources for Celestia (and if you take a peek, you will), make sure that you download the educational version of the program from the Motherlode website.  You need it to make everything work.  #