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Solar System Liveby John Walker |
Welcome to Solar System Live, the interactive Orrery of the Web. You can view the entire Solar System, or just the inner planets (through the orbit of Mars). Controls allow you to set time and date, viewpoint, observing location, orbital elements to track an asteroid or comet, and a variety of other parameters. Click on the title of any control to display a help page explaining it, or go directly to the help table of contents. You can compose a request with custom settings and save the results in your browser's hotlist or bookmark table, allowing direct access to Solar System Live with all the controls preset to your own preferences. You can plot the orbit of an asteroid or comet by choosing it from the object catalogue and clicking the “⊚” (orbit) button.
Other astronomy and space software available from Fourmilab includes:
Solar System Live would have been enormously more difficult to implement without the help of the freely distributed software mentioned in the credits. Implementation details are also available.
The mechanical orrery shown in the heading of this page is in the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC in the United States. The image is © Copyright 1993 Smithsonian Institution.
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