User Interactive solar system simulation

Note:

This is a test simulation and best viewed only on a desktop mode

Key objectives, features and incites:

1. This application was solely developed out of developer’s curiosity and love for simulation and space.
2. The application was made exciting and can be employed for educational purpose to get inspired, learn and visualize the solar system.
3. The simulation is a scaled down version of the actual solar system with incorporation of some of the major celestial bodies in our solar system. The bodies include all the 8 planets of our solar system, the moon and the sun.
4. The simulation is to some extent made user-interactive and the user can alter the orbit eccentricity, velocities of the planets and raise the mass of the sun. The user-interactive box is displayed upon double clicking the left mouse button over the simulation. Upon increasing the mass of the sun or the centripetal forces of the planets, the velocities of the planets tend to increase considering a constraint fixed distance between the planets and the sun. The orbit eccentricities of the planets can also be altered to the scale of the earth’s and shall be most noticeable in case of mercury. This is because the orbit eccentricity of the mercury is the highest among all other planets (around 0.2). The other planets have fairly less eccentricities and might not be noticeable in this scaled down simulation.
5. A dynamic table has been incorporated on the sides to give instantaneous values of all the parameters of the planets, the moon and the sun as these bodies move along their orbits. The parameters include the instantaneous distance from the sun (orbit radius), instantaneous velocities, orbit eccentricities, Semi-major axis distance, time period around the sun and the mass.
6. The simulation has zoom in / zoom out features w.r.t. the sun along with panning the viewport to give a better view of the smaller planets and the moon in comparison to the large sizes of the outer planets.
7. The application also has a navigation feature that activates when the sun goes out of the viewport and is directed to it.
8. The application employs the basic orbital mechanic modeling techniques, animation function and properties in Javascript and few basic matrix operations to create this simulation.
9. The major challenge faced by me as a developer is to scale down the entire solar system including the sun. The sun as we all know is huge and cannot be compared with the sizes of the other bodies in the solar system. Therefore, it is impossible to scale down and accommodate all of them together in one small screen. If the sun were to be accommodated then the sizes of all other bodies would have been reduced to a point. To solve this, the size of the sun is fixed arbitrarily while maintaining the sizes of all other planets and the moon to the scale. All other parameters including orbital velocities, distance from the sun, orbit eccentricities, semi major axis, mass and time periods are maintain to the scale.

In the end, don’t forget to leave us a review / suggestion / recommendations / incite to further improve this application.