Celestia

So Celestia is an open source project that allows you to view a variety of objects in space and time.  The quick 4 minute tutorial video is all you really need to get started and find your way around.  You can see the orbits of all the planets and their moons, you can view other galaxies, you can search for comet's, lots of possibilities.  I just sat and flew threw our galaxy checking out all the planets and their moons and their orbits.  To be honest I lost myself in this new found ability to navigate space and time.
This technology solves the problem that we sometimes have visualizing things.  I can sit in class and say that the solar system is a certain way.  I can even show pictures, but there is just something gained from being able to navigate space on your own in real time.
This technology could be awesome if I do teach astronomy at some point in the future.  It's free and easy to navigate, and students will probably enjoy it.  It allows for them to be astronauts, to be able to see what these planets look like and how far away they are.  You could give assignments to find distances between certain planets or solar systems.  You could get students to count the number of moons on a certain planet in maybe a different system.  There really are a lot of options.
As a chemistry teacher (what i'm planning on doing now) I would offer and extra credit assignment when we are learning about unit conversions.  First I would have the students download the program and watch the tutorial video here (Celestia tutorial).  Second, I would have a few objects that I wanted to know the distance between.  The sun and the earth in meters, jupiter and venus in inches, halley's comet and mars in miles.  The distances are in "au"s a lot of the time so having students convert that to miles and other units could be a good and interesting assignment (1 astronomical unit = 150 billion meters).  This will be useful in that it can reinforce the scientific notation and unit conversion process we've been practicing in class.
If I do end up teaching astronomy at some point, an assignment using Celestia would be a big help.  It would be optimal if we had a computer lab at our school with all the computers already having Celestia installed on them.  First we would just take a class period to go down to the computer lab and get started, they could watch the tutorial in the lab and ask me any questions they might have.  Second I would have them travel to various objects in the solar system just to see them, the sun, the planets, etc.  Third I would have a list of other places or objects the students could go to and I would have them pick a few.  I would then ask the students to reflect on what they learned and if they found anything cool.  This would mostly be done as an introduction to the course and will probably be assigned in the first few weeks of class.
Below are a few screen shots of my exploration of the program.

 Check out the sunset on the day I was born.

 

 A picture of Jupiter and its moons with their orbits.  Time is going at 100x normal speed in this picture.

 Hally’s comet with our sun and a few other planet’s in the back ground.  Notice time is going 100000x faster than normal.  You can actually see the planets moving and the comet rotating in the program.

A picture of the Ursa Minor Dwarf with time going 100000000000 times faster (but in reverse)  I’m going back in time!

The program is stunning and well done.  I will use it in the future.