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Strictly spoken it's a piece of software, simulating the Solar System's bodies in 3D on your Windows or Linux PC (will work in most *NIX's as well).

In difference to quite a few other programs it does so in realtime. Meaning you can view all the planets, moons and spaceships move along their paths, trace them, follow them, orbit them and even control them (time and spaceship contol).

History

OpenUniverse (OU) was formely known as Solar System Simulator (Ssystem). It was initially released on Nov 1997 with the intention to create a rotating Earth display on a main stream PC. Since these early roots a continuing development and expansion has taken place. Was version 1.0 only aware of the major bodies (planets), version 1.2 added a whole bunch of moons. Solar System v1.6 then added more ways of movement for the user's eye (camera) within Solar System's virtual universe and last but not least better textures for a lot of bodies. This version, called OpenUniverse (OU) finally has been renamed to underline the concept behind the further development of the program: Open for the whole Universe, not just the solar system.