A little closer to infinity
Leave the ordinary behind. Fly past the planets, find your place among the stars, and see the night sky in a new light.
Preparing planets and 9,096 real stars…
Explore
To show the sky above you. Your location stays in this browser.
Explore · bodies ×40, Sun ×5 · moon orbits ×40 · tiny globes enlarged further
Positions are computed live in your browser: planets from JPL Keplerian elements, the Moon from the Astronomical Almanac series, asteroids and comets from the JPL Small-Body Database, satellites from CelesTrak TLEs propagated with SGP4. Planet orientations follow the IAU rotation models, so Saturn's ring tilt, Earth's day/night line and eclipses match the real sky (approximately).
Exploration scale enlarges bodies ×40 (Sun ×5). Heliocentric distances stay to scale; moon and satellite orbits expand ×40 with their parent. Tiny planets and moons are enlarged further for visibility; these overview globes do not cast eclipses. Zoom in for resolved surfaces, or select Real scale for true sizes. Galactic motion shows a short-term local approximation of the Solar System travelling through the Milky Way.
Earth surface: NASA Earth Observatory Blue Marble Next Generation (R. Stöckli), one mosaic per month. Other planet textures © Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0), based on NASA data. Moon, dwarf-planet and Vesta maps: Steve Albers and Björn Jónsson (non-commercial use), from NASA Galileo, Cassini, Voyager, New Horizons and Dawn imagery. Close-up surfaces are streamed: Earth from EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2020 (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Vesta and Ceres from NASA Trek, with 3D terrain from LOLA, MOLA, MESSENGER/USGS and Dawn/DLR elevation models; Vesta and Ceres are drawn in their measured shapes. Live clouds: EUMETSAT/NOAA infrared composite via clouds.matteason.co.uk (every 3 h). Live Sun: NASA SDO/HMI images via NOAA SWPC. ISS and Hubble 3D models: NASA 3D Resources. Earth normal/specular maps from three.js examples. Stars: Yale Bright Star Catalogue; 3D star positions from the HYG database v4.1 (Hipparcos/Yale/Gliese, CC BY-SA 4.0). Exoplanets: NASA Exoplanet Archive (Planetary Systems Composite). Constellation figures: d3-celestial (BSD, © Olaf Frohn). City list: Natural Earth. The Milky Way and Andromeda are illustrative particle models built on measured structure; stars, nebulae, black holes and exoplanet hosts are placed at their catalogued positions. Orbital data: NASA JPL. TLE: CelesTrak.
Pillars of Creation: NASA/STScI positioned 3D model by Leah Hustak and Ralf Crawford, NASA's Universe of Learning. Material reference: STScI/AstroViz visualization, Greg Bacon and team. Geometry is resampled for the browser; gas, colors and lighting are illustrative.
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