Scenario Point of view Lat/Lng Look at Planet Scale x Animation speed Direct link url

Scenario The available scenarios are in fact collections of numbers that describe celestial bodies and their position. These numbers are coming, for the most part, from Nasa's websites. Their accuracy is quite impressive, more than enough for the context of this simulation. The picture that you see on any given date represents what the real Solar System looked like on that date.

Point of view This option makes it possible to place the camera at the position of a planet of your choice, so you'd see the other planets from the point of view of the chosen one. From there you can zoom by scrolling. The Free Camera is a camera that floats into space, and that you can move by scrolling and dragging. This camera always revolve around a point specified in the "look at" option field.

Look at You can make your selected camera look at a planet of your choice, so that it always will be centered in your viewport. If you place the camera from the viewpoint of a planet and look at another one, the latter's path will be traced relative to the former's position. This feature is useful to observe the apparent retrograde motion of the planets relative to the Earth.

Planet scale When the scale is at 1x, the planets sizes are in 1:1 scale to the size of the orbits, and of the universe. Since the distances in the Solar System are so huge, we can't even see the planets at this scale, so I made it possible to make the planets larger to see them more easily. I left the possibility to view them at their real size, because I feel it gives a better hint about the vastness of our Solar System.

Speed Move the slider to change animation speed. Depending on the scenario, precision of positions can decay with increased speed.

jsOrrery - Eclipse 2017 You will now see the most accurate representation of the total solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 I was able to achieve in this Solar System simulation. In this scenario, the viewer is positioned on the surface of the Earth at the greatest eclipse, that is somewhere near Louisville, Kentucky, about 45 minutes before the event. Feel free to input your own geolocation, in decimal degrees, in the appropriate field in the GUI on the left of the screen. You can then hit the play button to view the eclipse's progress over time. In order to view the eclipse, I have to use complex integrations involving a few hundred thousand terms, which are run at every frame of the animation. Because of the complexity involved, the animation will run slowly on most machines... but it's the price to pay to have an accurate view of the eclipse! For more information, please read Viewing eclipses in a WebGL Solar System simulation. The project itself is available on Github at https://github.com/mgvez/jsorrery Follow @m_vezina close

jsorrery solar system