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Solar System Simulator 58

Posted by michael from the the-joy-of-rendering dept.
Greylark writes "The Solar System Simulator lets you see a number of different planets and moons from a number of different positions in the solar system, at any day and time in a 800 year period." This is very cool, and even though it's been around for a while, we don't seem to have run it before.
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Solar System Simulator

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  • I discovered and played with this some time back. Got a really nice screenshot of Earth transiting Jupiter (do the geometry -- it's a hard shot to get IRL). Pretty cool.

    ssystem is neat in that you can scoot around to different PoVs, but the navigation is a bit tricky -- acceleration and decelleration, but no space anchor you can just throw out to stop you, or easy means of going to a particular location (unless it's near a major body).

    Another cool tool if you're into the exploring stuff is xaos. Especially the random-dot stereograms. Mandlebrot never looked so good.

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

  • *Space* station.
  • There is a program distributed in open source called OpenUniverse [openuniverse.org]. It is interesting that the NASA stuff has a visual a bit similar to that program. However I'm not so sure that OpenUniverse is as accurate as NASA's one. The program seems to work in several *NIX platforms and Windows.
  • I lost many many hours to this fine game. Now as I learn more about astronomy I'm constantly reminded of this game. Looking at any list of the nearest stars makes me remember all of the ports that were easily accessible. I'm working from memory here, but this game let you zoom from a full galactic view all the way down to individual planets. Pretty impressive to see on my 386SX/16.
  • it'd be cool to really USE the software, play with it, maybe program with it, etc. I visited there last summer and it was pretty much what you'd expect at such an exhibit - huge crowds ushered through, half hour show, and then you're back outside. Sure, you see galaxies from new angles and are informed that it's an actual rendering from real data as opposed to artwork.

    it's just not *rewarding* to be a member of the viewing public. I saw that thing and I wanted to be the guy that put it together and zoomed around the universe to make the film.

    The walkway after the big bang show is sweet though - you go down a spiral representing the history of the universe, with a constant time span per linear distance. You see telescope photos along the way of objects from that time thanks to the long travel time of light reaching us. And near the end, there's a human hair representing the entire recorded history of Earth. I probably spent about a half hour on that walk looking at the photos, reading the descriptions, and talking with the employee who was there to answer questions for people leaving the show. He had nothing else to do between shows so it was pretty interesting.

    The other thing I like about that walkway is that it's like running the gauntlet for a creationist :-)

    --

  • Home Planet is a nice simulator, only for Windows I'm afraid but public domain! It's possible to enter the trajectory of various objects and observe them in animations. Home Planet [fourmilab.ch]
  • > This is very cool, and even though it's been around for a while, we don't seem to have run it before.

    Since when did that become an issue?

    --
  • As long as we are talking about planets and looking at them, there is a really neat website that allows you to track satellites (ISS, etc) and see when they will pass over you, as well as comments, irridium flares (SAVED AGAIN! sheesh), and moon phases. ~ Matt


  • Ok.. I just realised I forgot to post the URL *DOH* smacks self.

    Heavens-Above.com [heavens-above.com]

    This works no matter wheren you are.


  • There was this old Solar System simulator for the macintosh that was based on the 'Orion Project' [islandone.org]. It was really cool, your could 'fly' around the local star system in real time if you wanted to. At the speeds that would have been possible using the 'Orion Project'.

    ...and I'm not sure we should trust this Kyle Sagan either.
  • XEphem [clearskyinstitute.com] is a pretty neat program for this sort of thing too. It is also included on the Red Hat 7.1 Power-Tools disc.

  • There was a mid-nineties DOS game called Elite II Frontier that included a fine solar system simulator. You could either fly around and see the planets "yourself" or there was an in-game 3D map that could show orbits and planets at any position in time, with animation.

    This was all largely written by David Braben, the author of the original Elite game. It was a fine work of art, if a bit idiosyncratic. Rendering was done in software, in a way that was not rying to be photorealistic. The game blended reality with fiction, so I have no idea how accurate the solar system simulator was.

    Pavlos

  • A co-worker of mine showed be this software [starrynight.com] which I think does a lot of what you describe. I was impressed with it. It costs money, but there is a trail version on that site.
  • With those programs, can someone check if this site is right about the "cross in the sky"?
    http://members.aol.com/humblemagi/
  • This reminds me of some software I saw several years ago.. Redshift [maris.com] which "allows you to recreate a view of the night sky from anywhere in the Solar System from 4700BC to 9999AD".

    It seems to have changed quite a bit since I first saw it. Now seems to be more of an educational tool/encyclopedia..

  • Orrery (Score:3)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @03:55PM (#275962) Homepage Journal

    A model of a solar or planetary system is called an orrery.

    If you're looking for these, including this word in your search will find a lot more. Many types of orrery have been made of brass for hundreds of years.

  • NASA's site seems either down, slow, or slashdotted. There's also the Solar System Live [fourmilab.ch] (http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Solar/actio n?sys=-Sf). It appears to be/do the same thing (though I haven't seen the NASA site).

    The Good Reverend
    I'm different, just like everybody else. [michris.com]
  • > John Walker (of Autodesk fame)

    In AutoCAD (R14 IIRC), there was a drawing solar.dwg which was a movie of the solar system at work. You could add your own planets and give them all weird masses and initial velocities. Then you just sat back and watched them crash into each other and stuff. I think it was only in 2D though.
  • Heavens Above [heavens-above.com] is quite the cool site, and I just noticed that they are an Akamai customer, so they are probably fairly resistant to slashdotting.

    Another great site for those who are interested in this stuff is Ron Dantowitz's Sky Show [skyshow.com]. Ron has pioneered some inexpensive methods for getting diffraction-limited images and video from mass-market amateur telescopes and video equipment. You, too, can make a recognizeable movie or snapshot of the shuttle and/or ISS as they pass overhead.

  • ...of the universe as we know it. Does our galaxy make it out into some other dimension, do we get sucked into a black hole, or, since we are so damned important, are we completely unaffected?
  • Thanks. I always wanted to know. Now the question I'm faced is with -- Why? .... Am I covered in mayo because I make a better battery when I'm all smeared up? Or is this life I'm living some sorta really nasty wet dream?
  • If it isn't already slowed down because of slashdotting, It's about to crawl to a screeching halt. Unfortunately, it's not the kind of site that could be easily mirrored somewhere.
    --
  • It seems that Slashdot is the only news site, where you can first read the comments and only THEN have maybe a little chance to get to the contents of the article also when the targeted site is not slashdoted anymore.

    Have you ever thought about a cache system for all the links similar to what google provides?

  • Quoth the Editor:

    This is very cool, and even though it's been around for a while, we don't seem to have run it before.

    Great, does this mean a flood of stories about things that: (1) have been around forever, (2) qualify as "very cool", but (3) haven't suffered at the hands of slashdot's editorial staff?

    If so, I heartily recommend sliced bread [notmuch.com] (or, things surpassing sliced bread [google.com])for the next "joy of" story...

  • Read the FAQ.


    Need XML expertise? crism consulting [maden.org]
  • There's a nice program called Starry Night [starrynight.com] it lets you pick any point in time and view the cosmos. You can also go to any planet and view what the stars look like from there. Of course it's only for windows or mac and it costs money. It's still very cool though.
  • To quote from February's Sky & Telescope magazine: "XEphem, the brainchild of programmer Elwood Downey, is a star-charting, sky-simulating, ephemeris-generating celestial virtuoso that can do just about everything that the usual Windows and Macintosh star-charting software can do -- and sometimes quite a bit more. And it's completely free. What's not to like?" It runs on almost any *NIX, and was just recently updated - now at version 3.4. You can even track earth satellites, with push-button TLE updates off the web. See it at http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem.
  • ssystem is a cool linux app (using OpenGL) that performs a similar function to this. It isn't 100% accurate, but the planetary locations are within a decent range (like you'd know anyway, hehe). :) Check it out the homepage [umd.edu]
  • On the Commodore 64. It was a rom cartridge. It rocked. The physics where somewhere between Moon Patrols and Summer Games.
  • The (new) Hayden Planetarium has a *very cool* projection system on a hemispherical dome. Combines output from a 28-CPU, 7-GFX-pipe SGI Onyx2 (~1999 technology) with some computer controlled lasers and a new computer controlled Zeiss star projector. *Very* impressive stuff. This ain't the planetarium that your parents took you to as a kid, it'll blow you away.

    http://www.sgi.com/features/2000/feb/hayden/index. html [sgi.com]

    http://www.amnh.org/rose/digitaldome.html [amnh.org]

    Yeah, yeah, I know the jokes... Plane-Arium. And yeah, yeah, SGI doesn't include their compilers with thier OS... but it's still the coolest thing I have ever visited.
  • I remember back in my high school physics class, there was a simulator for the Sol system. It ran on a (Mac) PowerPC, it was slow, it was ugly, but it rendered a 2D scaled simulation of the all the planets, some comets, some asteroids in a belt-type formation somewhere past Mars, and you could bring up historic events (such as planetary alignment around 0 BC). It was the same thing.

    I suppose that for the most part, this doesn't matter because this NEW! IMPROVED! version is 2.5-D (unless it's got a voxel display). Bah.

    I wonder if that old one is still available or if it has an Xlib version... intriguing... that make an interesting project for someone.
  • Quoth the editor: "Nevermore"

  • i totally agree.. there have been some horror stories of innocent people having to pay 20,000 for one month of service.. but what can you do>? warn them in advance?

  • Casio used to make a watch with an orrery on it, the Cosmo Phase. I don't see it on their web pages now. The display provides a resolution of only 12 positions for each planet. Halley's Comet is shown too, and there's a list of solar eclipses.

    Among its other features, you can advance or reverse the planetary motions to future and past dates by pressing a button. As you hold down the button, the motions speed up several steps, until the planets are whizzing around the solar system. Some engineer designed a funny behavior at this point -- if you let go of the button, the planets coast to a stop, as if there were real inertia and friction in the display.

  • "that's no moon... that is a battle station" e.
  • re: the above twit

    "Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem."
    (found on a bulletin board at Fermi Lab)

    I think that about sums it up.

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • First, there is this [nasa.gov] Milky Way simulation in VRML format from Nasa, part of the Virtual Universe project; web page here [nasa.gov], complete with vrmls of the local galaxy area with a couple thousand galaxies.

    Then there is this Freeware Dos program Virtual Galaxy [netwave.net] which let's you navigate among the local stars. This one is okay, but needs to be updated to allow for a better grade of graphics. Worth checking out, though. Actually has the most stuff as far as science data goes. Maybe an open source project can be made from it.

    There is also this little page [limber.org], a nice collection of vrmls for the local area of the Milky way

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • I've got pretty much the same thing (ableit sans all the neato variables...but it's got most of the options) on my Palm. It's called Planetarium and can be found here [palmgear.com].

    Really great for romantic evenings with other geeks!
  • Gald to see this online, wish I had known of it earlier. Allows you to follow the alingment of the stars for that important research, like was tehir an eclipse that allowed christopher columbus to fool the natives when he landed or is that just a myth perpetuated into truth over time through it's re-telling. wish it included some of the known cometary bodies. different comets apperances have affected history over time and would be nice to be able to track those also.
  • You had to mention Frontier, didn't you. Damn!! There goes productivity for the next six months.

    I simply loved that game, most of all for its realism. Not only the accurate simulation of the solar system, but the pure size of the simulated universe. Damnit, the game fits nicely on a 1.44M floppy, yet contains an almost complete replica of the entire galaxy! Granted, most of the star systems would have to be based on guesses, but never the less.

    Then the newtonian flight engine - real space flight simulation. Run out of fuel? Tough luck! You won't stop and float dead in space - you will slam into your destination planet at the same speed you had when you ran out. Dogfights? Bah!

    Bottom line, my all time favourite game. 'Nuff rambling.

    Now, I guess I'll have to mention OpenUniverse [openuniverse.org], just so I don't get modded off topic here. Real great opensource solar system simulator. Gotta try it.

  • There's a very cool open-source Linux and Win32 solar system simulator at www.openuniverse.org

    Now if I could only get it to compile on my RedHat 7 system, Id be happy.. It works for me on winblows.. :(

    Very cool.. dont let my griping dissuade you from checking it out...

    neurotech at iname dot com

  • I recall seeing programs in DOS which did this kind of stuff (although without the impressive graphics, of course), waaaay back in the early 90s. There were even a couple which were shareware.


    Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
  • 1. Point a system entry in your hosts file to a non-existant IP.
    2. Put this system name into the address line of your browser.
    3. Keep hitting refresh.
    4. Repeat.
    5. After 3 days, point the hosts entry back to a real system.
  • called OpenUniverse over at SourceForge. [sourceforge.net] Really nice graphics, rendered in OpenGL, great interface, support for fullscreen, and originally developed for use with GeForce (which means it looks great on my comp. ; )
  • Carinasoft [carinasoft.com] sells a very nice and powerful astronomy simulation software. Includes detailed planetary data as well as the complete Hipparcos star catalog to enable "virtual star voyages". Mac and Win versions.
  • talk about karma whoring or whatever the hell... cut your messages in two parts and hope they both get modded up lol
  • About two years ago, National Geographic [nationalgeographic.com] released their version of the Virtual Solar System [nationalgeographic.com] on their web site. It requires a Superscape [superscape.com] plugin called Viscape [superscape.com] (sorry, Windows and Mac only) to work properly. Download the Viscape plugin, install, and then visit National Geographics "Virtual Solar System" web site to check out a 3D-rendered tour of the solar system with information on all the planets and about 50% of the moons, some asteroids, some comets, and the sun (of course). It not only has a 3D-rendered environment to navigate, but also various information about those same heavenly bodies. Very in-depth and well done, and is a great resource for learning about the various bodies in our solar system and how they interact.
  • You-you want the moon? Just say the word and I'll type http://space.jpl.nasa.gov [nasa.gov] in the address bar."
  • This is perfect site for 4/20 [420.com]...god bless you michael!
  • NASA's site seems either down, slow, or slashdotted.

    There was a shuttle launch yesterday (Fri, the day the poster commented). NASA's servers are always clobbered when a bird is about to go up.
  • I'd rather see a simulator showing most of the stars viewable from earth. It would be fun to be able to see things like how far is it from arcturus to betlegeuse. or what's the sky look like on alpha centuri looking toward the sun.
  • sorry

    quantum physics makes this impossible

  • I mean If you post a site, why not make a miror site and post that, I mean you know 50% of the sites posted get slashdoted. This is bad news for person who probably will get in trouble with his\her isp. I mean have some consideration!!! This isn't fun anymore.

  • The same system is used to calculate the present position of the Cassini probe [nasa.gov], as well as the present position of the Mars Odyssey [nasa.gov] probe.

    As an aside, the solar system is actually a chaotic system, so the simulator would likely lose accuracy outside of plus/minus a few thousand years from now.

  • Similar (and not so similar) Stuff (Score:3)

    by Guppy06 ( 410832 ) on Friday April 20, 2001 @04:48PM (#276002)
    John Walker (of Autodesk fame) has his own site at http://www.fourmilab.ch [fourmilab.ch] with a lot of nifty stuff. Amongst other things is his astronomy section, where he has the Earth and Moon Viewer [fourmilab.ch], which allows you to see beautiful images of what the earth or moon look like at any time, and from various viewpoints (including from satellites), Solar System Live [fourmilab.ch], which is a virtual orrery that shows you what positions the planets are in at any time, and Home Planet [fourmilab.ch], which is a Windows program that combines the first two sites with a few other features. There's also a few public domain UNIX programs (w/ source), but they're a bit old (OpenWindows, anyone?) and will require a bit of tinkering to convert to run natively in KDE or Gnome. (If only I knew how to program well...)

    If you get Home Planet, other useful things are NISTime (freeware time synch program from NIST) available here [nist.gov], and you can get two-line satellite tracking (TLE) info (also useful at the Earth and Moon Viewer site) from NORAD's satellite catalog here [af.mil]. It's all text files, and there are several that are designed for automated downloads for the real fanatics.

    In general, everything is surprisingly simple, and it doesn't take much to, say, get the latest telemtry on Endeavor (STS-100) here [nasa.gov], cut-and-paste it into a Home Planet satellite database (text file), and see exactly where the shuttle is.

  • What we could really use is a program that simulates all of the atoms and quantum particles in the universe. We could view not only past eclipses, but any other point in history. A hardware version could be used as a mass-storage device since one could retrieve any document ever made by anyone. Too bad I'm stuck with an ATA/66 controller. :(


    "Leave the strategizing to those of use with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
  • People of America, is our children learning?

    For many a years worth of time based on time we all have come to love those great folks at NASA. We've had greatfullified programs that excelified our great countries space race. Its what I call the Great Space Coaster.

    We as a people have had priveledgeded the witnessingness of the Challenger, and that other space shuttle from that Tom Hanks movie, and it is with the great concedence, we have also landed men on the moon.

    There is a time, hispanically speaking however, we must come together in togetherness, and together we shall be

    Together.

    People of America it is with my great pleasure under order of Vice President Dick Cheney, are ordering the halting of carbon monixide protectional fundingness of programs, that we have, funded, in order to maximitizify our great space programs into something more than just a Star Trek dream.

    But more into a realityness of the American Star Wars nuclear weapons defense system at the low cost of 1 trillion (*smirking Dr Evil grin*), no 1 billion dollars. This my fellow Americans, and hispanically acquired Americans hombres, will assist our great nation, with the protection of the people's republic of China.

    Yours truly,
    Resident Goerj Boosh

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