Hacker Remix

Show HN: Atlas of Space

769 points by pieix 2 weeks ago | 124 comments

Hello HN! Sharing a recent side project of mine, the Atlas of Space, that I built out to explore the Solar System.

As a long-time space nerd, I realized recently that I didn't have a good intuition on the scale, speed, and relative orientation of the celestial bodies around us. So over the break I built out a kind of spatial Wikipedia to click around and learn about planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies orbiting the Sun.

The physics is all simulated in the browser using simple Newtonian mechanics. There's a lot left to do from here, including modeling objects in non-Keplerian orbits and replaying different spacecraft missions.

Hope you have fun clicking around, and curious to hear what I should improve next!

nico 2 weeks ago

This is incredibly well done. Thank you!

Love that it works so seamlessly on mobile. I clicked on it expecting it to be almost impossible to use

Instead, I was able to easily navigate everything without getting lost

Also, the speeding up/down controls are excellent, very useful

guigui 2 weeks ago

Well done! I could spend a long time on this.

One minor suggestion: you should make the labels clickable instead of just the planets/stars. I found it difficult to click on a tiny pixel on screen.

derbOac 2 weeks ago

... also the orbits themselves ideally? Maybe I missed it but in looking at some of the larger orbits it was hard to zoom in and out to figure out what orbit went with what. It would have been nice to more easily click on the orbit.

I really like it though.

fuzzythinker 2 weeks ago

Seconded. Also, please make the non-planet labels brighter. The contrast isn't good enough to read it.

aaroninsf 2 weeks ago

After 90s of playing I came back to add the same comment :)

Maultasche 2 weeks ago

This is very nice. I didn't know Pluto's orbit was more inclined than many of the others.

It also gives me strong "The Expanse" vibes. Probably because there are so many orbital bodies shown that were mentioned in those books. I also learned that Pallas is an actual asteroid.

pieix 2 weeks ago

Appreciate the comment! The Expanse and Paul McAuley's Quiet War series both get a lot of inspiration credit for this project. I tried to include every body that has some "brand recognition", whether from fiction or from real spacecraft missions. There are actually quite a few asteroids and comets that have been visited in real life — NASA, ESA, and JAXA have been doing amazing things in the Asteroid Belt over the past few decades.

9dev 2 weeks ago

Seconded, the whole design seems like something straight out of the books. And it also feels like it's just waiting for other solar systems to be included there…

thinky_thoughts 2 weeks ago

Where is the ring gate?

getwiththeprog 2 weeks ago

A 'fictional' toggle, with items and locations from movies and TV would be cool.

ezascanbe 2 weeks ago

Wonderful! I showed my kids (9 and 10) and we really enjoyed zooming in and out, reading about different Celistial bodie. We were all really intrigued about the "Trans-Neptuinan Objects" and the strange orbits.

We spent a whole 30 minutes afterwards talking about the existence of aliens and how long it would take to reach Alpha Centauri at our current level of technology versus light speed, and the further unpacking faster than light travel depicted in science fiction.

Thank you!

pieix 2 weeks ago

Thank you for sharing this with your family and for maybe increasing the number of space nerds on this planet! Exactly what I was hoping for with this project.