Gaia sample within 25 pc, plus reused bright stars with approximate HYG distances.
Performance
Adaptive quality · measuring during movement
Visual resolution adjusts to sustained frame times. Positions and orbital calculations are unchanged.
About this model
Positions and distances are to scale. Tiny bodies and stars have enlarged markers; planetary maps and surface orientation are illustrative. This is a reconstruction, not a camera feed. No sky photographs are projected as nearby scenery.
Nearby-star sample: 25 parsecs (about 82 light-years), not a complete census. Gaia DR3 with HYG supplements. Missing radial velocities are assumed zero; their motion estimates are incomplete. Stellar motion is linear: binary orbits and Galactic acceleration are not included. Dates are limited to 1800–2200. Planets and Jupiter’s four large moons use Astronomy Engine. Other moons use illustrative two-body orbits based on JPL Horizons elements at 3 November 2026; phase and precession errors grow away from that date. Moon surfaces and spherical shapes are illustrative; these are geometric positions at the selected time, without observation light-time corrections.
Cloud centres: Zucker et al. (2020). The Local Bubble is a schematic cavity, not a measured boundary; cloud wisps, extents and colours are illustrative and remain static during time playback.
Small bodies: JPL SBDB. A bright-object-biased sample, not true belt density. Orbits use fixed elements without planetary perturbations; accuracy degrades away from their epochs. Markers are enlarged; surfaces and comet tails are illustrative.
Distant galaxies reuse eight registered Hubble images from the sky view, at their angular scale and orientation. They remain fixed in direction as a local-travel approximation; image patches may contain foreground stars. Full image credits are available in the sky view.
Galaxy-scale light patches are illustrative, not individual catalogued stars. Milky Way: roughly 100,000 light-years across; Sun roughly 26,000 light-years from its centre (ESA). Andromeda: 780 kpc away, disc inclination 77°, position angle 37.7° (NED atlas). Arm layout, light, dust lanes and unseen surfaces are illustrative. Galaxy models stay fixed during playback. The Local Group overview includes these two models and a Triangulum point marker.
Large-scale points: 2MRS / Huchra et al. (2012), NASA HEASARC. 21,566 galaxies with approximate distances cz/H₀, H₀ = 70 km/s/Mpc, between 10 and 120 Mpc. No flow correction: cluster depth is distorted by galaxy motions. Colour indicates estimated distance from Earth, not physical galaxy colour. Magnitude limits, Galactic-plane gaps and sample edges are not empty space. These points are static during playback; this is not an expansion or lookback-time simulation.
Landmark distances: Virgo / M87, Coma, Triangulum. Cluster markers indicate approximate centres, not membership or boundaries. No filament connections are fabricated.
Observable-universe reference: roughly 92 billion light-years across (NASA), using present-day distances. The small central region compares our 240 Mpc survey diameter with that scale, about 0.85%. It is a size comparison, not a complete galaxy map. The dashed circle represents our observable horizon, not a physical wall or an edge of the entire universe.
Confirmed hosts: NASA Exoplanet Archive. Matched within this stellar sample, not a complete census. Exoplanets themselves are not rendered.
Moon sizes: JPL · Orbit reference: JPL Horizons
Gaia DR3 · HYG (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Planetary maps (CC BY 4.0)
Trails fade toward their oldest end. The Sun’s trail shows the previous 12 modelled years; moon trails show one orbit relative to their planet; other trails record playback. The Sun moves around the Solar System barycentre; Galactic orbits are not modelled. Find in sky returns to today’s Earth view; survey images are archival.