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.