Rendered at 01:31:53 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
subtlesoftware 3 minutes ago [-]
Turning on asteroids is a jump scare
4 minutes ago [-]
wanick 6 hours ago [-]
Author here. It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale, with its current state, plus the objects around Earth from the CelesTrak catalog.
Data: CelesTrak TLEs (SGP4), asteroids and comets from JPL SBDB, spacecraft positions from JPL Horizons. Updated daily.
Rendering is WebGL2, orbit propagation runs in web workers. The asteroid set (~30 MB) loads in the background.
The time slider runs forwards and backwards; satellites appear and disappear by launch date.
ddahlen 35 minutes ago [-]
How are you sourcing the spacecraft positions from JPL? Are you just grabbing a huge list of state vectors?
My old day job was to compute asteroid positions for NASA telescopes, if you are interested in orbit prop you may be interested in:
https://github.com/dahlend/kete
I made an asteroid only version of yours earlier this year, where it does full orbit propagation in workers:
https://dahlend.github.io/ketev/
____tom____ 3 hours ago [-]
> It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale
Is it really? I don't think you could see the satellites, if they weren't drawn at 1000x scale. I am wrong?
At real scale, i would expect to not see anything.
jsphweid 3 hours ago [-]
I think it's pretty obvious the satellites aren't drawn to scale, given they don't change in size when zooming in/out.
blindflag 40 minutes ago [-]
I assumed they meant that relative distance from Earth or orbit is to scale, not that the size of the dots was to scale, but I could be wrong
boxed 4 hours ago [-]
A way to zoom that is faster than mouse wheel would be nice. Takes forever to zoom out a long way!
Oarch 4 hours ago [-]
Being able to zoom on mobile at all would be great.
And a way to close all of the overlay panels!
wanick 2 hours ago [-]
Thanks, I've already fixed it.
3 hours ago [-]
noosphr 7 minutes ago [-]
Thank you, this is terrifying.
mncharity 16 minutes ago [-]
Fun: 116 d/s with Earth/etc selected, gives a Sun "orbiting" the Earth/etc effect.
Bug: ISO DEB at 17 min/s looked normal, but at 2.8 h/s it became a solid-ish (lots of crossing lines) red ellipsoid on the opposite side of the Earth. Upon returning to 17 min/s, it snapped back, after some delay. Current-ish Chromium on linux/X11.
Feat: Pressing ESC deselects.
Feat: Perhaps spacebar could pause/unpause time? To avoid fiddly "note current time ratio by counting arrows or hovering, then click pause. Afterward, click the right place to restore time ratio".
UX: Would you believe I wrote a Feat for 'add a "Now" button to date popup', not "seeing" the current button? Hmm, perhaps move it between date and time ratio?
UX: Just now for me, upon page load, nothing is moving and the Earth seems a black ball (night over Africa, with night lights obscured by satellite dots). So I could spend several minutes exploring, without being both close enough and oriented to notice there's a texture map. Perhaps start positioned over the terminator (interestingly pretty) and with scaled time (interestingly moving; demos motion; draws attention to time zoom. Maybe 17 min/s?).
Issue: The planets maps are true-ish color, modulo intensity and shadow. The Sun is... not. Given that "the Sun is some color other than white" is so pervasive a misconception, reinforcing it seems... sigh. Can I interest you in a white field with a few pretty sunspots? Perhaps with limb darkening and tint?
climech 1 hours ago [-]
Just spent a little time following Europa Clipper, it will fly by Earth very soon! If you zoom out from Earth, it's already pretty close. This will be its second gravity assist after Mars. Very cool site!
Beautiful site. I love how tranquil the scene becomes when satellites and spacecraft is unchecked. Thanks for that SpaceX (and others).
blindflag 37 minutes ago [-]
I love this; also runs surprisingly smoothly (at least in browser; didn't check mobile). Also beautiful and hypnotic in motion. What's the next step that you want to take to develop it (not that there needs to be one)?
nugzbunny 4 hours ago [-]
This is amazing. Well done. How long did it take to make?
fnordprefect 3 hours ago [-]
Seconded. Great work.
wanick 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks! It's a byproduct of another project, so hard to say exactly. A few evenings.
mcv 3 hours ago [-]
There are way more asteroids near the Earth than I thought.
nephihaha 3 hours ago [-]
Quite incredible how much manmade crap there is up there, and much of it probably useless, and a potential problem for the satellites which are of actual use.
einpoklum 4 hours ago [-]
Wow, speedy and convenient! Well done!
Some insights:
* There is sooo much space debris! Dead sattelites and rocket bodies
* Starlink put up a hell of lot of satellites, too.
* There is a pretty dense sphere of items around the earth at geo-stationary orbit, a bit like a mantle; but most of all in a circle on that sphere.
dylan604 3 hours ago [-]
Everyone talks about the ringed planets, but I've never seen Earth mentioned of having a ring. I've also never seen mentioned that the rings were not man made as a qualifier. Yet, there it is, very clearly visible when zoomed out.
One of the things that I noticed was how far away Parker was from the sun. I know it has a crazy orbit, but seeing it at a scale reference just emphasizes how its orbit is complicated.
Also, checking out the platforms around L2. Euclid and JWST are no where near each other which again, just emphasizes how much space there is in...space.
zamadatix 16 minutes ago [-]
Jupiter's rings, which are thin enough we didn't really notice until we sent a spacecraft there, have ~5,000,000,000,000 tons of material (plus or minus several orders of magnitude). The total mass we have ever launched to orbit is a good portion less than 100,000 tons and the vast majority of that is not found in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_ring
The only reason it appears like a ring here is the marker for each satellite or piece of debris is the size of a large city.
eutropia 5 hours ago [-]
What's with those giant blobs of asteroids offset in jupiter's orbit by like 60deg on either side?
Almost 1 in 3 tracked spacecraft is Starlink, is that accurate?
Sayrus 3 hours ago [-]
Even more than that. Of the 35k tracked "Satellites and spacecraft", more than 12k are debris bringing Starlink to 1 in 2. If you look only at Active known satellites, around 2 in 3.
From Starlink's page on Wikipedia: "Starlink accounts for approximately 75% of all active maneuverable satellites in Earth orbit"
Data: CelesTrak TLEs (SGP4), asteroids and comets from JPL SBDB, spacecraft positions from JPL Horizons. Updated daily.
Rendering is WebGL2, orbit propagation runs in web workers. The asteroid set (~30 MB) loads in the background.
The time slider runs forwards and backwards; satellites appear and disappear by launch date.
My old day job was to compute asteroid positions for NASA telescopes, if you are interested in orbit prop you may be interested in: https://github.com/dahlend/kete
I made an asteroid only version of yours earlier this year, where it does full orbit propagation in workers: https://dahlend.github.io/ketev/
Is it really? I don't think you could see the satellites, if they weren't drawn at 1000x scale. I am wrong?
At real scale, i would expect to not see anything.
Bug: ISO DEB at 17 min/s looked normal, but at 2.8 h/s it became a solid-ish (lots of crossing lines) red ellipsoid on the opposite side of the Earth. Upon returning to 17 min/s, it snapped back, after some delay. Current-ish Chromium on linux/X11.
Feat: Pressing ESC deselects.
Feat: Perhaps spacebar could pause/unpause time? To avoid fiddly "note current time ratio by counting arrows or hovering, then click pause. Afterward, click the right place to restore time ratio".
UX: Would you believe I wrote a Feat for 'add a "Now" button to date popup', not "seeing" the current button? Hmm, perhaps move it between date and time ratio?
UX: Just now for me, upon page load, nothing is moving and the Earth seems a black ball (night over Africa, with night lights obscured by satellite dots). So I could spend several minutes exploring, without being both close enough and oriented to notice there's a texture map. Perhaps start positioned over the terminator (interestingly pretty) and with scaled time (interestingly moving; demos motion; draws attention to time zoom. Maybe 17 min/s?).
Issue: The planets maps are true-ish color, modulo intensity and shadow. The Sun is... not. Given that "the Sun is some color other than white" is so pervasive a misconception, reinforcing it seems... sigh. Can I interest you in a white field with a few pretty sunspots? Perhaps with limb darkening and tint?
https://celestiaproject.space/
Some insights:
* There is sooo much space debris! Dead sattelites and rocket bodies
* Starlink put up a hell of lot of satellites, too.
* There is a pretty dense sphere of items around the earth at geo-stationary orbit, a bit like a mantle; but most of all in a circle on that sphere.
One of the things that I noticed was how far away Parker was from the sun. I know it has a crazy orbit, but seeing it at a scale reference just emphasizes how its orbit is complicated.
Also, checking out the platforms around L2. Euclid and JWST are no where near each other which again, just emphasizes how much space there is in...space.
The only reason it appears like a ring here is the marker for each satellite or piece of debris is the size of a large city.
From Starlink's page on Wikipedia: "Starlink accounts for approximately 75% of all active maneuverable satellites in Earth orbit"