New project: The Interactive Orrery
I’ve always wanted to build an orrery. One of those geared-up mechanical ones, especially, but that’s beyond my current ability to do, so I figured I’d build a digital one, which is more in line with my skill set.
Currently included:
- The eight major planets
- Dwarf planets
- The asteroid belt
- The Kuiper belt
- The Jupiter trojan asteroids.
You can toggle between a logarithmic view, which will display things a little more densely, and a linear view, which is better for showing the really eccentric orbits of some of the dwarf planets, but it makes the Kuiper belt objects difficult to see.
I plan to modify this over time to add more objects like some notable comets, the scattered disc, moons, and the Sednoids.
Implementation
Claude Sonnet 4.5 assisted with the orbital equations and pointed me at the right data references. It seems to have done pretty well in this regard as far as I can tell, but I’m looking forward to learning more about the math and really grokking it.