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The background image is courtesy of NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/)

Note: If you cannot see Mercury, Venus, and Mars please click on "Settings" Settings and under "Shaders" select "Disabled".

Introduction

Changing visual effect

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Move the camera to a planet or moon

Move camera by some distance

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Display Youtube video

Diaply Picasa photo

Submitting tour

The following formulas are used to calculate the position of each planet. Certain assumptions are made and therefore the positions are only approximations.

First the mean anomoly is calculated:
Mean anomoly
,where M is the mean anomoly and Tp and longitude of perihelion are constants.

Then the heliocentric longitude is calculated:
Heliocentric formula
,where v is the true anomoly. However, by assuming that eccentricity is 0 (the orbit of the planet is a perfect circle), the true anomoly becomes the mean anomoly (M).

So now, since the radius of the orbit of the planets is given, and we also have the heliocentric longitude, we can calculate the coordinate of the planet in the solar system using simple trigonometry:
X coordinate = orbital radius * cos(heliocentric longitude)
Y coordinate = orbital radius * sin(heliocentric longitude)

For more information and to find out how to get a better approximation please refer to the following book:
Practical astronomy with your calculator By Peter Duffett-Smith

3D Solar System Web
Beta 0.82

This is a 3D solar system simulation application, which gives you the approximate location of the planets in the solar system at different time, and some information about each one of them. This application uses HTML5 and WebGL.

Version 0.82

  • Fixed a some small bug which caused a box to show up in the middle of the screen.

Version 0.81

  • Fixed some small bugs.
  • Re-arranged the ads and created just one ad instead of two to make it less intrusive.

Version 0.80

  • NASA's Solar System News is added and the top menues are cleaned up a bit.

Version 0.70

  • Added new navigation controls.

Version 0.62

  • Added statistics to the application.

Version 0.61

  • Fixed a bug which prevented tours to be submitted.
  • Made the tour window slightly smaller to avoid interference with the AD and the navigation.

Version 0.60

  • Added capability to click on the planets to go to them.
  • Added lens fare effect by upgrading to the latest version of min.Three.js.
  • Fixed small issues with Saturn and Uranus rings.

Version 0.51

  • Fixed a problem that happened in the new version of Chrome. The bug caused the screen to be black.

Version 0.50

  • Now everyone can create tours.

Version 0.40

  • Added the main infrastructure for the tour system and added the single Solar System Tour.

Version 0.30

  • Added Asteroid Belt and multi-language support.

Version 0.21

  • A "Shaders" option has been added in the "Settings" mene. Users who don't see the three inner planets can disable the shaders to view those planets.
  • Reducing the height of the Help panel slightly so that it fits better for some users who can't see the entire panel.

Version 0.2

  • The Moon has been added (with approximately correct position).
  • City lights texture is added to Earth.
  • Earth atmosphere has been added.
  • A bug that caused the camera to jump when zooming out of a planet is fixed.

Version 0.1

  • The initial release.
Continue to Solar System
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