Solar System Model

Camera & navigation

• Drag — orbit the view around the focused body.
• Scroll — zoom in / out.
• Click a planet — fly to it and open its facts card (click empty space to close).
• Hover — shows the body's name.
• Search (Ctrl+K) — fuzzy-jump to any of the 23 bodies, including the dwarf planets. Number keys 1–9/0 jump straight to the ten classic bodies.
• ‹ › buttons — hop between planets.
• Free Roam button — first-person flight: click the view to capture the pointer, then WASD to move, Space/C up & down, Shift boost, scroll to change speed. Esc releases the pointer; Esc again exits and the camera holds its pose. Exiting leaves no planet selected (free-camera mode: drag to look, scroll to dolly); re-entering free roam continues from the same spot. Click any planet to focus it again.

Simulation controls (gear button)

• Ambient Intensity — fine-grained fill-light slider (0–1). The toolbar Ambient button is its quick day/night preset.
• Show Moons — show or hide all moons.
• Run — pause / resume the simulation clock.
• Speed Preset — quick time speeds: ×0.125, ×1, ×10, ×100.
• Reverse Time — run the clock backwards.
• Speed — fine-grained speed slider (0.05× to 200×).
• Motion Trails — fading comet-tails behind every planet and dwarf planet.
• Constellations — the 88 IAU constellation figures drawn over the real naked-eye star sky (Hipparcos/HYG catalog), aligned with the planets' real positions.
• True Scale — real sizes and real distances (1 unit = Earth's radius). The Sun becomes 109× Earth and space becomes vast — use the planet buttons or clicks to travel.
• Asteroid Belt — the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.
• Kuiper Belt — the icy outer belt beyond Neptune (30–50 AU, home of Pluto, Eris, Makemake and Haumea).

Toolbar buttons

• Search — fuzzy jump to any body (Ctrl+K; 1–9/0 jump to the classic planets).
• Planet Orbits — orbit rings of the planets & dwarf planets around the Sun.
• Moon Orbits — orbit rings of the moons around their host planets (separate from the planet rings).
• Ambient — quick day / night fill-light preset (fine control lives in Settings → Ambient Intensity).
• Free Roam — first-person flight: click the view to capture the pointer, WASD to move, Space/C up & down, Shift boost, scroll speed, Esc releases then exits. Exiting leaves the camera in place — no planet is selected (free-camera mode: drag to look, scroll to dolly); re-entering continues from the same spot.
• Tour — cinematic flight Sun → Neptune.
• Quiz — 6 questions; pick an option below the question or click the planet in 3D.
• Cinematic (H) — fades out every UI layer and slides in letterbox bars for clean viewing; a small floating chip stays for screenshots and exit.
• Screenshot (P) — saves the current view as a PNG, with or without cinematic mode.
• Settings — the full simulation control panel.
• Help — this reference.
• GitHub — the author's profile.

Sim date

Top-left HUD shows the simulated date. It starts at the real current date — and the planets are placed at their REAL positions for that instant (JPL Keplerian elements, accurate 1800–2050), advancing 8 hours per real second at ×1 speed. Click the date chip to jump to any date in the range — past or future — or press "Now" to snap back to the present. Mercury's 7° tilt, Pluto's 17° tilt and perihelion speed-ups (Kepler's 2nd law) are all real; moons keep simplified circular orbits. Times are UTC. The telemetry strip beneath shows live numbers: distance to the focused body (AU/km), its mean orbital velocity, the on-screen scale (1 px ≈ N km), the sim rate, and the light travel time from the focused body.