Move around
- Orbit
- Drag
- Pan
- Shift + drag or middle-drag
- Zoom
- Scroll or use + / −
- Select / focus
- Click / double-click
- Speed up
- Ctrl + drag / zoom
Zoom stays centered on the focused object. Keyboard: 1–5 choose a scale, Space play or pause, Esc close a panel.
Use Layers to show or hide object groups. Time changes the date, plays motion, and sets simulation speed.
Choose a scale
Solar system shows planetary orbits. Nearby stars starts around the Sun’s stellar neighborhood. Milky Way adds a stylized, non-interactive galactic backdrop. Local galaxies and Galaxy survey open progressively wider samples.
Scale, objects & selection
The map uses one linear AU-based distance scale. The Sun and planets use physical radii; star radii are estimated from catalog data. Small bodies remain points of light until their disks resolve. Galaxy markers do not encode physical size.
At wide views, groups stand in for many stars or galaxies. Click a group to inspect its representative; double-click to focus and zoom in. Selected and focused objects stay individually visible.
Rendering & quality
WebGPU draws the resident star and galaxy catalogs. Planet markers, labels, selection rings, orbits, and guides use separate passes. Browsers without WebGPU use the Canvas 2D renderer.
Stars during motion caps the sample while moving. Full GPU star budget caps the settled star field. When the full budget can hold the catalog, WebGPU keeps all stars visible during movement. Optimization thresholds use estimated visible population, not marker counts.
Sensitivity defaults are calibrated at 100%. Ctrl+ speedup applies to drag and zoom.
Names thin with zoom and screen-space overlap. The star haze pauses while moving and fades at wide scales.
Performance diagnostics
Latest, p50, p95, and max are app render times in milliseconds, sampled over the most recent 120 draws. Zooming or dragging starts a new sample. Phase timings help locate CPU work; object counts are submitted GPU instances.
GPU memory is an app allocation estimate, not physical VRAM. Browser, compositor, and driver allocations are not exposed.
Catalog & limitations
—planets
—stars
—galaxies
- Planets: JPL Horizons states converted to local orbits.
- Stars: Gaia DR3 plus named-star supplements; SIMBAD supplies matched names.
- Galaxies: sampled 2MRS and SDSS DR17 records.
Catalog files are local and map browsing works offline. Wikipedia links open externally when selected. Star distances and sizes are estimates; radial stellar velocity is omitted. The deep galaxy sample is incomplete across the sky, galaxy positions are fixed, and the Milky Way backdrop is illustrative.