I, Voyager: Open-Source Software Planetarium

ashton314 · 2023-10-22T04:58:34

Beautiful. Reminds me of Stellarium, also open-source: https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium

As I kid I spent hours pretending to be Sulu at the helm of the Enterprise while flying through a field of stars. :) Good times.

BHSPitMonkey · 2023-10-22T06:58:55

For me, that was Celestia: https://celestiaproject.space/

Apparently both were first released in the same year, 2001. Interesting coincidence!

ashton314 · 2023-10-22T19:46:11

Wait, I had both programs! I was playing Celestia!!! Thank you so much for reminding me of that!

two_in_one · 2023-10-22T20:42:24

Stellarium is great, thanks. Working on Linux is a huge plus.

It s would be perfect with telescope control. Just curious how hard it is to attach some control and use Stellarium as user interface? Scopes have standardized API for control and cameras, which makes it easier. I can try...

the__alchemist · 2023-10-22T14:36:33

You might try Space Engine too, for that experience.

freedomben · 2023-10-22T05:33:52

Wow, I am truly impressed. Great work! I'll be donating to help this effort. This has already been incredibly helpful to me and my son who is learning about the solar system. Being able to see the orbits of each planet in such a fantastic UI makes it a cinch to understand why Pluto takes turns being the most outer planet.

It's a Progressive Web App, uses Godot, so there's nothing to install; it's just a web page!

hddqsb · 2023-10-22T08:11:12

Very cool. Some small criticism/feedback:

- Pluto is shown as if it is spinning around itself, but in reality Charon (its largest moon) is so heavy (12.2% of Pluto) that their barycentre (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter_(astronomy)) is actually outside of Pluto's surface.

- All the planets and moons are shown as perfectly spherical, but for the smaller ones (e.g. Charon) that's not accurate. Not sure if there is a practical way to fix this though.

- Zooming using the scrollwheel is backwards -- rolling the scroll wheel up zooms out, but in all other applications on my system it zooms in.

- The panels are very annoying. They can be hidden by unticking in the top right corner, but they still come back on mouseover (getting in the way when trying to click on a planet). I can't find a way to completely close them; they can be moved around, but they refuse to go offscreen. "Options > GUI Size> Small" helps a little.

hddqsb · 2023-10-22T14:33:38

EDIT:

- They do have several non-spherical moons and asteroids (bottom left), which is awesome. I tried finding a 3D model of Charon online; NASA's model (https://science.nasa.gov/resource/charon-3d-model/) is disappointingly spherical, on the other hand https://3d-asteroids.space/moons/P1-Charon has a satisfyingly bumpy surface (for half of Charon).

- Fixing the zoom direction is almost within reach -- there is an option "Mouse Rate: In/Out" which defaults to 1 and can be used to slow down / speed up zooming, unfortunately it won't let me set it to a negative value to flip the direction.

ourmandave · 2023-10-22T13:51:05

I'm glad you mentioned the panels come back on mouse over.

I unchecked one and it disappeared, but I had no idea how to show it again.

I'm used to panels shrinking to a down caret or chevron (i.e. ^, >).

dade_ · 2023-10-22T12:36:03

Great project. I loved the idea of Visible Solar System on the Commodore VIC-20, but the execution was a bit limited by the technology 40 years ago to say the least. https://www.vic-20.it/visible-solar-sistem-1930/

daedalus_f · 2023-10-22T08:50:17

Lovely! Learnt about the Hildas.

One possible bug (??): when looking down on the system (press the system button on the bottom centre panel, 90 degrees to the ecliptic) the orbit of pluto will be projected to cross or not cross that of neptune depending on which side of the system you look down from.

boobek · 2023-10-22T06:47:58

It's morning.. I thought I'll see a lot of open source software codes/projects in some form.. :)

ta8645 · 2023-10-22T03:32:02

The web page takes a while to load, but is quite responsive and illuminating once it gets going. Really well done.

jen729w · 2023-10-22T05:40:30

Tiny nitpick: the progress bar on loading is black on a bit less black. It's basically impossible to see, so for a while I thought that nothing was happening.

lukasb · 2023-10-22T05:48:31

Works great on my M1 iPad except for textures not loading on the planet of focus.

FredPret · 2023-10-22T13:25:45

Sometimes, my fellow humans come up with something so jaw-dropping that I'm just grateful.

otteromkram · 2023-10-22T09:50:51

Not on desktop, but is this similar to NASA's Eyes?

https://eyes.nasa.gov/

ulrischa · 2023-10-22T14:05:38

Wow very cool. Is the data available via an API?

shafiemukhre · 2023-10-22T07:21:32

Love this!

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