So I decided to program a Solar System simulator in WebGL and Javascript

forktheif 12 years ago |

Huh, looking at that Orrery, I realise my mental map of the solar system was a little off.

I always though comets like Haley's went much further out on their trip away from the sun, but that shows it doesn't even reach past Pluto.

And the orbits of Mercury and Mars are a lot less circular than I thought.

Pxtl 12 years ago | |

The Oort cloud/Kuiper-belt area goes way further than Pluto, but the comets that have orbits from out there into the solar system are too long-period to get fancey names like Halley's. Think about it - Halley's comet comes by every 76 years. That's insanely short for a Kuiperoid.

hazz 12 years ago |

Here's the article describing how the simulator was built: http://lab.la-grange.ca/en/building-jsorrery-a-javascript-we...

typpo 12 years ago |

I really like how you've documented the challenges you encountered. The "Building jsOrrery" article is probably one of the best sources on the internet describing the process of building a full solar system viz. Your code is also very logical and easy to follow.

I made a similar simulation that shows the inner planets and asteroids, called Asterank (http://asterank.com/3d). Your code is open source, but does it have a license? I'm interested in adapting your accurate star background for my simulation.

martimoose 12 years ago | |

MIT license. Glad to know you like it. Your project is nice as well, I like the addition of the asteroid belt!

Joe-Z 12 years ago |

for the people who came here wanting to see a solar system simulation, here's the direct link:

http://mgvez.github.io/jsorrery/

martimoose 12 years ago | |

You're right, I should probably have posted the link to the live project instead of the blog post. I figured that the story of why I did it is interesting as well though.

garethadams 12 years ago | | |

I was more expecting to see the link of how you did it on HN. I mean I got there from the link you posted but as this is a technical crowd I'd have thought that was the more interesting thing.

As an aside, I'm very impressed that the Sun appears to dim during a solar eclipse (http://mgvez.github.io/jsorrery/?scenario=EarthMoon&planetSc...) but I'm surprised it isn't hidden completely - have I just got the timestamp wrong for the specific viewpoint you're using?

martimoose 12 years ago | | |

I hesitated when posting the article. Maybe I should have posted the technical one. I wrote them all in one piece, but split them afterwards for different crowds. The one I posted is the least technical one of all, but it's the entry point. My bad. The best scenario to see eclipses is the Inner Solar System, and put the scale to 1. Eclipses are very difficult to simulate, as the distances are so huge, you need to have incredibly precise positions to observe one. But it is still possible to see them, for example at http://mgvez.github.io/jsorrery/?scenario=InnerSolarSystem&d...

garethadams 12 years ago | | |

Having read the help text about the moon position I understand the problems. It's still so damn impressive though, I didn't mean to sound critical above :)

jeena 12 years ago |

That is more then awesome, I will show it to my daughter, it is funny how different the reality is to the map of our solar system we get through traditional media like TV.

martimoose 12 years ago | |

I'm very happy to know that this project has educational value!

damon_c 12 years ago |

Looking at this, it's hard to believe that we have subsisted for so long on the standard top down flat version of this that we have seen in books since... Pluto was discovered. The children of the future will not have to remember those dark days.

Solar System visualization industry: Disrupted.

Pxtl 12 years ago |

For fans of this, the biggest project on this subject is traditionally Celestia, but that's pretty long in the tooth now.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/celestia/

damon_c 12 years ago |

This pretty much settles the "Is Pluto a planet?" debate for me.

Pxtl 12 years ago |

I'd let the "scale planets" go to more than 100x. Even at 100x they're crazy small when looking at a full map.

dodo53 12 years ago |

Appropriate to do an orbital mechanics thing for a company called La Grange (=> Lagrange) :oP

lettergram 12 years ago |

What the author forgets is, these projects can help you gain a good reputation.

The_Double 12 years ago |

It would be really cool if this supported multitouch pan/zoom.

xixixao 12 years ago | |

It supports scroll to zoom.

fastaguy88 12 years ago |

Doesn't seem to work with Safari.

martimoose 12 years ago | |

Yeah, it seems that WebGL is not enabled by default on Safari. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3300585?start=0&tstart=...

damon_c 12 years ago | |

Works ok for me.

Safari: Version 7.0 (9537.71)

systematical 12 years ago |

Awesome stuff.

benihana 12 years ago |

The Apollo 8 flyby scenario is amazing. It's awesome how much this changes my mental model.

martimoose 12 years ago | |

Thanks, this is for me the best part. To be honest, I really don't know how realistic it is. All I can say is that I plugged in the numbers and that's the output.

You can read about it, if you haven't already, on http://lab.la-grange.ca/en/showing-an-apollo-mission-free-re...