HN

Comments (33)

• sebmellen
  Oh man, it seems like my asteroid (Minor Planet 31689 - Sebmellen [0]) is missing.[0]: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711174[1]: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html#/?sstr=20031...
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  wanick
  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.
• climech
  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!
• tintor
  Celestia did all of this and more. 10+ years ago.https://celestiaproject.space/
• karim79
  Beautiful site. I love how tranquil the scene becomes when satellites and spacecraft is unchecked. Thanks for that SpaceX (and others).
• sans_souse
  I hate to be the one to come here with a feature request but can you guys hurry up with the Universe already?
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  nugzbunny
  This is amazing. Well done. How long did it take to make?
• subtlesoftware
  Turning on asteroids is a jump scare
• mncharity
  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?
• blindflag
  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)?
• mcv
  There are way more asteroids near the Earth than I thought.
• anon
  undefined
• noosphr
  Thank you, this is terrifying.
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  einpoklum
  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.
• nephihaha
  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.
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  eutropia
  What's with those giant blobs of asteroids offset in jupiter's orbit by like 60deg on either side?
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  1shooner
  Almost 1 in 3 tracked spacecraft is Starlink, is that accurate?
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  java-man
  Super! Not easy to select or center on a planet though.
• VladDanGeorgesc
  Very interesting!
• muffincodes
  [flagged]
• sickworm
  [dead]
• jalalabas
  [dead]
• Musigsal
  [flagged]
• jairofdez
  great project!!!!