Celestia for Linux does not confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. The exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit. Celestia comes with a large catalog of stars, galaxies, planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and spacecraft. If that is not enough, you can download dozens of easy to install add-ons with more objects.
Full Specifications
What's new in version 1.6.1
Version 1.6.1 has fixed truncation of long label strings in East Asian locales.