Those are just UX elements -- indeed, no satellite other than maaaaaybe the ISS could be seen here. For one thing, anything in LEO would seem to be moving so darn fast that it'd be disorienting.
I imagine there's various similar problems -- Saturn's rings not having the exact right pattern, asteroids not matching their real shape, all the planets being perfect spheres, etc. But I think this resoundingly meets the bar for "a view of the Solar System". Maps and territories and all that, y'know? A quick sketch in a textbook can also be a "a view" while containing far less detail.
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/
Importantly, how are we doing in terms of coverage? Are we seeing the sky enough and clearly enough to have a few years worth of warning before we get dinosaur-ed?
I figured the experts here would care to express an opinion.
Good question! From working within the field, there are new missions like NEO (Near Earth Object) Surveyor whose mission is to identify objects that could possibly be hazardous. There have also been missions previously done to study the required response to alter trajectories of objects such as the DART mission. We will also have a much greater picture of asteroids and comets in the inner Solar System in the future as the Vera C. Rubin observatory continues its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) over the next decade. People are definitely thinking about these problems!
Can you make a version for VR, mostly for those “have you seen this yet” moments? Just the same data, same rendering, free movement by grabbing space (though earth pov would be a nice bonus). I’d pay $1-10 and even $1-$10/yr
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.
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.
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"
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 use.
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!
Surely we can make room for cool stuff like this without implying that they're stealing or oblivious? The audiences are completely oblivious, and this one combines a stuff in a unique way (and I've seen/loved these kind of sites ever since finding out satellites are in freefall).
Not to mention that it's been in beta since at least 2016, seems mostly defunct, and the download page looks like this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/ Also, AFAICT, it didn't cover satellites at all.
The page that states "Please do not download Celestia from this repository. This repository has been abandoned, and the new source and website are here and here, respectively." for the past four years ?
Both Celestia and Stellarium have "open data" file formats that come "standard" with downloads and "extra" from community forums - ie all manner of real and SciFi movie/novel objects can be added with name, bitmaps, orbits, etc.
I mean, that’s linked from the celestia page linked above. If that’s the wrong link, then I can say with 100% certainty that the project is dead, no matter when the last code was pushed.
Re:”it could have similar features if you mod it enough”, sure.
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)?
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?
125 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 58.1 ms ] threadData: 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.
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.
I imagine there's various similar problems -- Saturn's rings not having the exact right pattern, asteroids not matching their real shape, all the planets being perfect spheres, etc. But I think this resoundingly meets the bar for "a view of the Solar System". Maps and territories and all that, y'know? A quick sketch in a textbook can also be a "a view" while containing far less detail.
They take ~90 minutes to orbit - it's not that quick. The satellites are actually moving at the right speed.
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/
I figured the experts here would care to express an opinion.
Links:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-OvnVdZP_8
https://rubinobservatory.org/news/11000-new-asteroids
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"
https://celestiaproject.space/
Not to mention that it's been in beta since at least 2016, seems mostly defunct, and the download page looks like this: https://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/ Also, AFAICT, it didn't cover satellites at all.
The page that states "Please do not download Celestia from this repository. This repository has been abandoned, and the new source and website are here and here, respectively." for the past four years ?
Try: https://celestiaproject.space/download.html and https://github.com/CelestiaProject/Celestia for version 1.6.4
Both Celestia and Stellarium have "open data" file formats that come "standard" with downloads and "extra" from community forums - ie all manner of real and SciFi movie/novel objects can be added with name, bitmaps, orbits, etc.
Re:”it could have similar features if you mod it enough”, sure.
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://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q6711174
Thanks for the heads up!