Has anyone played around with this? It's really quite awesome.
http://en.spaceengine.org/load/core/spaceengine_0971/2-1-0-18 - d/l for free here
What it is in a nutshell is a 3D map of known space that you can explore for eternity and never even get close to finding everything. Here are some screen shots I took in the first few hours of playing with this.
A brief moment as Io partially eclipses Jupiter's giant red storm
Sol distorted by Saturn's rings
Random alien planets I chanced upon while cruising the galaxies
Binary system in a massive globular cluster
Sunrise on a scorched planet orbiting those two stars
Binary orange giant system
Another binary system with a gas giant in orbit
I have to stop posting pics now or the thread will go on endlessly. This is well worth downloading for anyone interested in this sort of thing. It's FREE.