OrbitViz

Visualize orbital data fetched directly from NASA's Horizons System.

How to use

1. Set parameters in orbits.py (or uncomment an existing scenario)

2. $ python orbits.py

Parameters

• objects : a list of objects to track. Use the ids found here to create the list. Any bodies found in this api will also be drawn to scale.

• center : an object to use as the center of the scenario's frame of reference. There are some included as constants, but generally '500@[object id]' works.

• start and stop : the beginning and end of the scenario. The animation will loop.

• frames : how many frames are in the animation. Too few and orbits will look like stars, too many and Horizons will get mad (it doesn't allow timeslices smaller than 30s)

• interval : speed of the animation

• history : how long object trails should be, in terms of time. None means keep the whole trail from the start of the scenario.

Other things are tweakable, but not as relevant to a particular scenario. res represents the amount of points in the sphere drawings of large bodies.

Nice to have features

• Instead of drawing spheres, I would really rather have it draw a filled circle.
• Export gif
• Color customization
• Supplement with other data
• Be able to make changes while an animation runs
• Configure runs through cli arguments
• Configure runs as saved files