5 ms·

Stellarium Web: Online Planetarium

364 points by phsilva 8y ago

joshumax 8y ago
I've been following the Stellarium project for upwards of a decade and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how far it's come, even if I still have a few grips about telescope integration (still no built-in ASCOM or INDI interfaces). I did some work for a company about 2 years ago to port a stripped-down version of Stellarium for internal-use on some custom ARM-based in-field devices (the company worked in the satcom industry) and I'm still amazed at the amount of complexity that goes into astronomical simulation. In fact, I recommend devs interested in this space check out the Stellarium source repo, which provides ample amounts of well-designed (Qt-ish) C++ surrounding astronomical projection, star rendering, ephemeris calculation, etc. While this online-version doesn't seem to share too much with the regular desktop Stellarium (WebAssembly port, anyone?) it does appear to be one of the best web-based planetariums currently.
- bscphil 8y ago
  >I've been following the Stellarium project for upwards of a decade and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how far it's come Likewise. My first ever open source contributions were to the Stellarium project at about the age of 14. The regular volunteers (especially Matthew) were unbelievably patient and helpful. Working on Stellarium was what really pushed me to spend a lot of time learning programming.
  - xalioth 8y ago
    Hey that's one of the nicest compliment I ever got from a user/contributor, thanks! (Fabien from Stellarium team)
    - bscphil 8y ago
      Thank you for your devoted work on Stellarium for so many years!
GomatiTech 8y ago
This brings back memories. I have spent countless hours playing on the desktop versions years ago. An excellent piece of software, and glad it has a web version now. Bookmarking! And thank you!
stblack 8y ago
Here's a nice surprise: it appears to work just great on Safari on iOS. Setting your location could be easier, but color me impressed.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  The location defaults to (0,0) for me. Usually it's at least accurate to the country, which is accurate enough for this purpose. Setting it wasn't a big deal to me -- again, I just drop it anywhere in the country because it doesn't make a difference anyway, at least in Europe.
  - xalioth 8y ago
    In theory, the location should be auto-detected, if you allow your browser to send it
microcolonel 8y ago
Surprising how well integrated this is. I half expected this to be a direct port of the thing, with the same Qt UI, to Emscripten. Instead, there is some actual proper HTML UI overlayed on the WebGL canvas.
guillaumec 8y ago
I am one of the developers. Nice to see the project getting first page of hackernews. If you have any technical question about how it was done, feel free to ask.
- modzu 8y ago
  i've used the desktop version (which i love, thanks!) -- how was it ported to the web?
  - guillaumec 8y ago
    The web version is a full rewrite of the original code, with less features and smaller code. It was designed to work on the web from the start. We try to keep the style similar though.
    - pvg 8y ago
      Wait, so the web version is a C rewrite that is then emscriptened to JS but was specifically intended for the web? That's really interesting. Can you say a little bit about how you decided to take that approach?
      - guillaumec 8y ago
        In the end the target is web assembly, so even writing the code directly in js would require some compilation. Why C and not an other language that can be compiled to web assembly? I guess that was mostly a question of taste.
        pvg 8y ago
        Ah, the web assembly target is for performance? I'm curious about the process of getting from 'let's put Stellarium on the web' to 'we're going to do a clean, pruned rewrite in C and spit out web assembly'. Like, did you sit around and think deep thoughts about various options? Or did someone look at web assembly and think 'huh, webassembly might be a neat way to port Stellarium to the web'.
krylon 8y ago
This is really cool! I am not much of an amateur astronomer, but I regularly use the desktop version to look up what I just saw in the sky.
autocorr 8y ago
Stellarium [0] is such a great project. We even used it in an upper-division college observational astronomy course to perform the historical experiment to measure the Earth-Sun distance (the astronomical unit or au). It was a lot of fun, we mock-observed the transit of Venus [1] from two different latitudes to perform the same calculation done in 1769 on James Cooke's expidition from Tahiti [2]. [0] http://stellarium.org http://stellarium.org [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus_observed_from_Tahiti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus_observ...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
gonvaled 8y ago
Landscape? That's just dummy data, right? Can I set the timezone? Or can it be inferred from the location? The location is properly detected ...
- lucb1e 8y ago
  Landscape is dummy, yes. Timezone I'm not sure, but the time can be set using the slider in the right bottom corner.
z3t4 8y ago
A cold winter, perfectly clear sky, in a dark, dark forest out in nowhere, wearing night-vision goggles I looked up for a moment, and was stunned. It's ridiculous to think we are the only intelligent life out there, when every mm of the sky is filled with stars and galaxies.
pirvandrei 8y ago
How acurate is this?
- xalioth 8y ago
  Accuracy is good for present time (i.e. +- a few days from now), but degrades quickly with time (for planets, satellites etc..). For the online version we can't afford to use full planetary models (like in the desktop version) as it would be too much data to download at startup.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
grondilu 8y ago
When I learned about Webassembly, stellarium was high on the list of programs I thought would be nice if ported to the web. Like many people, I enjoy geeking about space and astronomy from times to times, but not enough to bother installing a dedicated software or keeping it up to date. Call me lazy if you want, but I'm sure there are many people like me. Now I know if I want to look at the sky on my computer, it's just one url in my web browser. Thanks. A port for Celestia would be nice too.
timonoko 8y ago
It needs to be localized. In other languages stars and constellations have more entertaining names, not just latin derivatives. Google translator seems to do just fine, judging by "Otava. Linnunrata. Pohjantähti."
diebir 8y ago
Stellarium is one of those apps that is capable of bringing a powerful new Macbook Pro to its knees. It's a great app, but the quality (at least on Mac) is complete crap. There's no QA, apparently. The recent versions on Mac have been basically unusable. Too bad.
asterismic 8y ago
I'd really enjoy seeing integration with Google Street view (where possible), to modify the terrestrial panorama, as the foreground for what the user might expect to see on the ground, for any given pin dropped on the map. It starts the viewing on Null Island (0 Lat / 0 Long) when geolocation is refused, so the grassy farm field is cool, but it's be neat to pull the view into cities, to see what the sky would look like, if the light pollution weren't getting in the way.

364 points by phsilva 8y ago

I've been following the Stellarium project for upwards of a decade and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how far it's come, even if I still have a few grips about telescope integration (still no built-in ASCOM or INDI interfaces). I did some work for a company about 2 years ago to port a stripped-down version of Stellarium for internal-use on some custom ARM-based in-field devices (the company worked in the satcom industry) and I'm still amazed at the amount of complexity that goes into astronomical simulation. In fact, I recommend devs interested in this space check out the Stellarium source repo, which provides ample amounts of well-designed (Qt-ish) C++ surrounding astronomical projection, star rendering, ephemeris calculation, etc. While this online-version doesn't seem to share too much with the regular desktop Stellarium (WebAssembly port, anyone?) it does appear to be one of the best web-based planetariums currently.

bscphil 8y ago
>I've been following the Stellarium project for upwards of a decade and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how far it's come Likewise. My first ever open source contributions were to the Stellarium project at about the age of 14. The regular volunteers (especially Matthew) were unbelievably patient and helpful. Working on Stellarium was what really pushed me to spend a lot of time learning programming.
- xalioth 8y ago
  Hey that's one of the nicest compliment I ever got from a user/contributor, thanks! (Fabien from Stellarium team)
  - bscphil 8y ago
    Thank you for your devoted work on Stellarium for so many years!

GomatiTech 8y ago

This brings back memories. I have spent countless hours playing on the desktop versions years ago. An excellent piece of software, and glad it has a web version now. Bookmarking! And thank you!

stblack 8y ago

Here's a nice surprise: it appears to work just great on Safari on iOS. Setting your location could be easier, but color me impressed.

lucb1e 8y ago
The location defaults to (0,0) for me. Usually it's at least accurate to the country, which is accurate enough for this purpose. Setting it wasn't a big deal to me -- again, I just drop it anywhere in the country because it doesn't make a difference anyway, at least in Europe.
- xalioth 8y ago
  In theory, the location should be auto-detected, if you allow your browser to send it

microcolonel 8y ago

Surprising how well integrated this is. I half expected this to be a direct port of the thing, with the same Qt UI, to Emscripten. Instead, there is some actual proper HTML UI overlayed on the WebGL canvas.

guillaumec 8y ago

I am one of the developers. Nice to see the project getting first page of hackernews. If you have any technical question about how it was done, feel free to ask.

modzu 8y ago
i've used the desktop version (which i love, thanks!) -- how was it ported to the web?
- guillaumec 8y ago
  The web version is a full rewrite of the original code, with less features and smaller code. It was designed to work on the web from the start. We try to keep the style similar though.
  - pvg 8y ago
    Wait, so the web version is a C rewrite that is then emscriptened to JS but was specifically intended for the web? That's really interesting. Can you say a little bit about how you decided to take that approach?
    - guillaumec 8y ago
      In the end the target is web assembly, so even writing the code directly in js would require some compilation. Why C and not an other language that can be compiled to web assembly? I guess that was mostly a question of taste.
      - pvg 8y ago
        Ah, the web assembly target is for performance? I'm curious about the process of getting from 'let's put Stellarium on the web' to 'we're going to do a clean, pruned rewrite in C and spit out web assembly'. Like, did you sit around and think deep thoughts about various options? Or did someone look at web assembly and think 'huh, webassembly might be a neat way to port Stellarium to the web'.

krylon 8y ago

This is really cool! I am not much of an amateur astronomer, but I regularly use the desktop version to look up what I just saw in the sky.

autocorr 8y ago

Stellarium [0] is such a great project. We even used it in an upper-division college observational astronomy course to perform the historical experiment to measure the Earth-Sun distance (the astronomical unit or au). It was a lot of fun, we mock-observed the transit of Venus [1] from two different latitudes to perform the same calculation done in 1769 on James Cooke's expidition from Tahiti [2]. [0] http://stellarium.org http://stellarium.org [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Venus [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus_observed_from_Tahiti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1769_Transit_of_Venus_observ...

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

gonvaled 8y ago

Landscape? That's just dummy data, right? Can I set the timezone? Or can it be inferred from the location? The location is properly detected ...

lucb1e 8y ago
Landscape is dummy, yes. Timezone I'm not sure, but the time can be set using the slider in the right bottom corner.

z3t4 8y ago

A cold winter, perfectly clear sky, in a dark, dark forest out in nowhere, wearing night-vision goggles I looked up for a moment, and was stunned. It's ridiculous to think we are the only intelligent life out there, when every mm of the sky is filled with stars and galaxies.

pirvandrei 8y ago

How acurate is this?

xalioth 8y ago
Accuracy is good for present time (i.e. +- a few days from now), but degrades quickly with time (for planets, satellites etc..). For the online version we can't afford to use full planetary models (like in the desktop version) as it would be too much data to download at startup.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

grondilu 8y ago

When I learned about Webassembly, stellarium was high on the list of programs I thought would be nice if ported to the web. Like many people, I enjoy geeking about space and astronomy from times to times, but not enough to bother installing a dedicated software or keeping it up to date. Call me lazy if you want, but I'm sure there are many people like me. Now I know if I want to look at the sky on my computer, it's just one url in my web browser. Thanks. A port for Celestia would be nice too.

timonoko 8y ago

It needs to be localized. In other languages stars and constellations have more entertaining names, not just latin derivatives. Google translator seems to do just fine, judging by "Otava. Linnunrata. Pohjantähti."

diebir 8y ago

Stellarium is one of those apps that is capable of bringing a powerful new Macbook Pro to its knees. It's a great app, but the quality (at least on Mac) is complete crap. There's no QA, apparently. The recent versions on Mac have been basically unusable. Too bad.

asterismic 8y ago

I'd really enjoy seeing integration with Google Street view (where possible), to modify the terrestrial panorama, as the foreground for what the user might expect to see on the ground, for any given pin dropped on the map. It starts the viewing on Null Island (0 Lat / 0 Long) when geolocation is refused, so the grassy farm field is cool, but it's be neat to pull the view into cities, to see what the sky would look like, if the light pollution weren't getting in the way.