Show HN: Real-time Solar System with 526k asteroids and all tracked satellites
wanick · 360 points · 95 comments · há 23 horas · Open original
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WAwanickhá 23 horas
Author here. It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale, with its current state, plus the objects around Earth from the CelesTrak catalog.
Data: 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.
FLFlowingRiverhá 12 horas
Brilliant project and very well done.
That aside, it is just astounding that even a moderate laptop just plows through this as thought it is nothing.
I remember doing orbital calculations on a 486DX with about 30 objects at just barely 30fps thanks to the FPU. That was pretty good for me. Without the FPU you would get maybe 2FPS. Now, you can just throw a half million around at 60fps+ in a web browser. Crazy!
CLclimechhá 18 horas
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!
SMsmusamashahhá 4 horas
I had no idea that we there are SO many aesteroids that we keeping track of. How are we even doing that? How do we recognize one aesteroid from another?
EVev0lvhá 4 horas
As of September 29, 2026, there are 16,613 active satellites in Earth orbit, 11,128 of them Starlink.
A fun fact: Kessler syndrome is a runaway chain reaction in orbit. Collisions create debris, and that debris causes more collisions, and when something breaks into pieces, its mass stays the same but its total surface area goes up, and reflected sunlight scales with area.
I submit to you that our kids' kids won't be able to see the milky way galaxy because of this litter.
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5 preview comments · loading full threadLog in to h4cker, then connect Hacker News to publish comments.
Author here. It's a browser view of the Solar System at real scale, with its current state, plus the objects around Earth from the CelesTrak catalog. Data: 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.
Brilliant project and very well done. That aside, it is just astounding that even a moderate laptop just plows through this as thought it is nothing. I remember doing orbital calculations on a 486DX with about 30 objects at just barely 30fps thanks to the FPU. That was pretty good for me. Without the FPU you would get maybe 2FPS. Now, you can just throw a half million around at 60fps+ in a web browser. Crazy!
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!
I had no idea that we there are SO many aesteroids that we keeping track of. How are we even doing that? How do we recognize one aesteroid from another?
As of September 29, 2026, there are 16,613 active satellites in Earth orbit, 11,128 of them Starlink. A fun fact: Kessler syndrome is a runaway chain reaction in orbit. Collisions create debris, and that debris causes more collisions, and when something breaks into pieces, its mass stays the same but its total surface area goes up, and reflected sunlight scales with area. I submit to you that our kids' kids won't be able to see the milky way galaxy because of this litter.