Show HN: Atlas of Space
Well done! I could spend a long time on this.
One minor suggestion: you should make the labels clickable instead of just the planets/stars. I found it difficult to click on a tiny pixel on screen.
This is incredible. I've also struggled to comprehend the scale of distance and time in space due to the sheer magnitudes involved, but this really puts it into perspective.
Some suggestions:
- Better documentation/help menu. (What is ∆t relative to? Some internal clock tick? Also, you should link the source code in the menu.)
- Arbitrary time adjustments so I could click on the date and set a custom date to view any point in the past or future
- The ability to see more than just the solar system
Incredible work! My son really had a blast scrolling around and exploring last night.
Did you take any inspiration from Celestia (https://celestiaproject.space)? It's been over 15 years since I last really used it (and starts with defaults not geared towards visualizing just our local solar system) but seems to have a lot of the features others have suggested. Might be useful to poke around and see how they solved things like time adjustments, selecting POIs, etc.
This puts into perfect perspective why, soon after sunset this time of year. Venus is low to the west, Mars is slightly higher but in the East, and Jupiter is nearly directly overhead
This is very nice. I didn't know Pluto's orbit was more inclined than many of the others.
It also gives me strong "The Expanse" vibes. Probably because there are so many orbital bodies shown that were mentioned in those books. I also learned that Pallas is an actual asteroid.
The project is amazing, thanks and congrats.
A bit of an off-topic comment, I can't cease to be amazed by the quality of HTML apps we can build these days. I remember the days when rendering too many rows on a table could completely break the browser.
I would love to be able to zoom out beyond solar system and grasp a sense of how far we are from other stars and our place in our galaxy, etc.
Wonderful! I showed my kids (9 and 10) and we really enjoyed zooming in and out, reading about different Celistial bodie. We were all really intrigued about the "Trans-Neptuinan Objects" and the strange orbits.
We spent a whole 30 minutes afterwards talking about the existence of aliens and how long it would take to reach Alpha Centauri at our current level of technology versus light speed, and the further unpacking faster than light travel depicted in science fiction.
Thank you!
I love that you’re depicting the Solar System accurately and to scale. It’s always bothered me that planetary orbits are often shown as equally-spaced concentric circles.
The Voyager missions could be interesting to include as you consider adding to your atlas.
I love this.
It’s really easy to get lost in Space when you zoom out and back in after twisting. I can see the planets on the edge of the screen, but can never seem to find them again.
Reloading, of course, fixes all. But maybe some compass to click on to recenter on yourself (earth) like on google maps.
It doesn't seem it is showing the tilt for Earth correct. When I zoom in for around now, the North Pole is in full sun rather than mid Winter. (I'm in Australia so I don't know if it is somehow using my local timezone wrongly)
Excellent project! I want my kids to grow up so we can explore this together :)
I'd love a "real-time" clock but I don't even know if that's feasible!
Stellar work!
I couldn't resist the pun, but all kidding aside this space atlas is truly wonderful.
It works seamless in mobile, that's just mind-blowing!
Curious to know, - Is the Source code open source? - If not what is the stack you used to build this.
Love it, thank you for sharing. Can't wait to show my kids later!
Are the background stars randomly generated or do they correspond to the actual galaxy? Distant points of reference would be interesting to see.
This is great. It's interesting how two very remote dwarf planets with widely different orbits are so close to each other right now (90377 Sedna and 2012 VP133).
EDIT: On further thought, I noticed another kind sorta nearby. I wonder if this is just a matter of looking for them in that area and that there could be a lot more that are undiscovered?
Beautiful!
I am currently working on a canvas app (not Three.js, though), so I will look through your code, too.
Thank you for doing such an excellent job.
This is awesome. I went looking for FarFarOut ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_AG37 ), maybe would be cool to add it?
space question -- why are the three outer-most bodies as consistent in general direction as they are? it looks like something blasted us (our solar system) in a specific direction. (speaking of, is there some astronomical/solar system analog for cardinal directions? like how would I say, "looks like we've been blasted in a north-east direction"
The visual design details make it feel like the navigation system of Elite Dangerous! Well done!
A sound effect would be nice. Just an idea.
I always see these videos [1] about helical movement of the bodies, which intuitively make more sense to me rather than assuming that the Sun itself is static and the bodies moving in a static circle around it. Is that really true?
I recently learned that from a distance moon looks like revolving around sun rather than earth. It's orbit does not mak e loops/spirals. Instead it's more like a dodecahedron. Or if seen in isolation around sun, it will look like normal circular orbit.
Can you add an option to switch drawing orbit of moon around the sun of its planet instead of its orbit around its planet?
I can’t get enough of anything that helps me wrap my mind around the scale of objects and distances in the universe.
I recently discovered Epic Spaceman on YouTube, who makes incredible visual comparisons to help understand these scales. https://www.youtube.com/@EpicSpaceman
There’s also Universe Sandbox 2. But tbh this Atlas of Space is more accessible to me due to my various input limitations.
Space Engine let’s you explore the entire observable universe.
If anyone here is a fan of strategy games and found this as totally awesome as I did, check out the game Terra Invicta on Steam.
I’m embarrassed to admit how many hours I dumped into it.
Great. I really like this.
What about doing something similar for the neighborhood of our solar system? E.g. all stars within 25 or so light years.
It's great but especially on mobile it's very difficult to center the view on a planet, zoom on it and follow it around the sun. On a desktop I eventually manage to click on it, then zoom and it stays in the center of the screen.
Please add the ability to make time go backwards in addition to forwards!
Also, when you click on the stop button (should probably be a pause icon), the icon should change to a play button.
Final feature request: relativistic mechanics pls.
What is the denominator in dt? 60 ticks per second? Definitely not per second. It should be mentioned somewhere, like a tooltip.
Great stuff! Just a wee thing - when I read "Atlas of Space" I immediately assumed it went beyond the solar system and clicked-through expecting to be able to track stars at least a few light years out. Reading your explanation here though, I see that's not intended.
Whatever, a job to be proud of!
Super cool! Like a simpler (not in a bad way) Universe Sandbox.
I'm reminded of the astronomical-visualization app I created at the beginning of my career and abandoned. This makes me want to go back to it again!
This is so cool! Is the codebase available for poking around (no worries if not!)
Now if only there was an option to export an SVG to à la https://github.com/samyk :p
Fantastic project!
Please add ability to click on the orbit path. Others have suggested clicking on label, but even after adding that ability, the labels can be hidden.
Fantastic! Will we venture beyond the solar system in the future, encompassing more astronomical objects? If so, that would be wonderful.
I do not know how that would be possible with the technology used, but having a deeplink to a planet or object would be cool à la https://atlasof.space/Nix
Celestia might also give you some ideas:
This is so awesome. I've wanted something like this where you could visit all scales of the universe from tiny atoms, to the galaxy, to the broader universe. Does something like that exist in some form?
Really nice - tested on mobile and desktop.
Nice touches:
- Motion from the running clock
- Knowing where the planets are on a given date
Wish list:
- Scroll through time
- Hide non-planets, esp. to see inclinations of the planets
- Display the orbital center
- Reframe as Atlas of Home
This is amazing!
One option for the future: orbits of celestial bodies influence each other. Is it enough to see when say, earth and mars get close?
Nice project! Is it possible to go backwards in time?
This is crazy good! Thanks for building it...
Incredible to see the speed at which some of the bodies are moving ... Especially Bennu...
#til that there is an object in (or near, I guess) our solar system called “FarFarOut”.
Did you use any libraries to help render the canvas? Or is the code built up from plain JavaScript and DOM APIs?
wow, this is amazing. Learned quite a bit just by looking at the orbits of various objects. Especially pluto. Didn't realize pluto had such an odd orbit relative to the ecliptic plane of the other planets and planetoids. I'm assuming that's due to Neptune?
stunningly smooth execution!
options for details, say first or second order lagrangian wells, interplanetary transport network, object launched from some planet on some trajectory, in whatever natural order of easy to hard feels right, almost like KML options on regular maps
Very beautifully done. Thanks for sharing, perhaps you can add the Trojan asteroids in the next iteration.
The one problem though that destroys all of this is that there is no curvature on earth: https://youtu.be/VLGBW6ouvl8?si=VLd5z2axJEyjkovH
Is there a way to lock the screen in order to be able to scroll around on mobile?
Why is the sun called Sol? And not Sun? I thought Sol was a sci-fi thing?
Beatiful, maybe add a pan control, and configurable starting time + dt?
So pretty!
Awesome I like these 3D infinite canvas things
Is there a way to show only spacecrafts? I am having a hard time finding any
incredibly cool omfg
Awesome project!
I get "secure connection failed".
oh shit Bennu. :)
You forgot to add planet X
/s
This is incredibly well done. Thank you!
Love that it works so seamlessly on mobile. I clicked on it expecting it to be almost impossible to use
Instead, I was able to easily navigate everything without getting lost
Also, the speeding up/down controls are excellent, very useful