This is typical of a video card driver not supporting the texture size.
I had this problem a very long time ago, but I can't tell on which system and which hardware.
However, I think I could reproduce this at work, on the very poorly supported 13" MacBook Pro with Yosemite (or the previous OS X)
I could even totally freeze that MacBook with Celestia on it. And it's the fault of the portable's configuration by our poor computer support at work.
This MacBook really sucks ! I don't think that the bug is on Celestia's side.
At home, I'm currently on an old
Mac mini 2010, and an old
13" MacBookPro 2010, both with
OS X Snow Leopard.
I'm using that
special ultra powerfull Celestia from Da Woon (made with my help a few years ago).
That version never got published (what a shame !).
It is *ABSOLUTLY ROCK SOLID*. Not a single glitch !
That special version could not even be crashed by any means on my two home computers ! (and I did tried, if Da Woon remember)

Really, I don't think I have any piece of software as stable as this version of Celestia (or maybe LaTeX).