EXPERIMENT 001 / Solar Observatory / interactive 3D
Gravity, in perspective.
Eight planets and one star. Explore the Solar System in 3D, move through twenty years, and compare Newtonian gravity with a relativistic approximation.
AN OBSERVATORY IN YOUR BROWSER
Take the controls.
Drag to orbit. Scroll or pinch to zoom. Choose a planet and travel through time.
Watch the film instead ↓Downloads approximately 21 MB before compression. Best experienced full screen.The cinematic tour
50 SECONDS · ARCHIVESilent film with on-screen explanations. Download MP4 ↓
READ THE MODEL, TOO
The science behind the image.
REBOUND/REBOUNDx evolves JPL initial states with an all-body first post-Newtonian (1PN) approximation—not a full spacetime solver. Planet sizes and atlas distances are adjusted for visibility. Model separation is not a measurement of perihelion precession. Moons are represented within planetary system barycenters.
The dataset spans 20 Julian years from 2025-01-01 TDB. Daily samples use cubic Hermite interpolation. Independent off-grid spot checks found approximately 20 km maximum absolute position error and 3.9 m error in the difference between the two models; these are sampled checks, not a global error bound.