3D Solar System and smooth aurora maps

Open Space Weather → Asteroids or Space Weather → Aurora. Use Full screen for the largest map; the same controls work inside the full observatory.

Explore the 3D Solar System

• Solar System frames the Sun and all eight planets. Inner planets brings the near-Earth asteroid sample into view. Outer planets and inner orbits span very different distances; use the presets rather than expecting every body to look equally large in one view.
• Drag to orbit the camera. Shift/right-drag pans; scroll or pinch zooms. Arrow keys rotate, plus/minus zoom, and 0 resets. Touch uses one finger to rotate and two to pan/zoom. Keyboard focus on the canvas shows its focus outline.
• Choose Focus planet or click a visible planet to inspect a textured 3D body. Saturn includes a ring model. Close the information card when you want more room.
• Click an asteroid marker or use Layers → Inspect a displayed asteroid for its native NASA/JPL record. Focus selected centers the selected marker when its approximate scene-date position is available.
• Time & display chooses a UTC reference date from 2000 through 2049. Play orbits advances the illustrative scene by 8 days/second; Pause orbits stops it and Today returns to the current reference time. Motion is paused by default and stops when the scene is hidden or the account/replay context changes.
• Layers control asteroid paths, approximate markers, labels, planet orbit guides and planet bodies. Map view still offers the separate encounter distance/date chart and historical fireball globe. Source tables and exports remain available.

What the 3D positions mean

Planet positions use NASA/JPL SSD's Table 1 fitted Keplerian elements and rates, in the mean ecliptic/equinox of J2000, valid 1800–2050. This is a lower-accuracy reference model, not a numerical Horizons ephemeris. The Earth marker uses the Earth–Moon barycenter, not an exact Earth geocenter. Source nominal errors are body-dependent; outer-planet distance errors can be hundreds of thousands of kilometres or more.

The scene's UTC reference is converted with a fixed +69.184 seconds modern TT/TDB approximation. It is not an exact historical/future leap-second conversion. This approximation and the fitted orbit model are unsuitable for precise encounter timing, spacecraft navigation or occultation work. For high-precision ephemerides, use NASA/JPL Horizons.

Asteroid paths retain the source semimajor axis, eccentricity, inclination, ascending node and argument of perihelion in heliocentric ecliptic J2000. Approximate scene-date markers advance the source mean anomaly using its published mean motion: M = M₀ + n × (scene JD − source epoch JD). This is two-body visualization; planetary perturbations, close-encounter dynamics and covariance are not propagated. Markers more than 365.25 days from the source epoch, or with missing/unsupported parameters, are withheld. Their valid nominal paths and original source details can still be read. The bounded map sample is at most 120 asteroids; the native catalogue remains separately searchable and exportable.

Positions and orbit paths share a linear astronomical-unit scale. Body sizes are enlarged for visibility, and surface orientation/lighting/stars are illustrative. The 3D scene is not an impact corridor or collision forecast. Use the unchanged NASA/JPL close-approach table for source TDB encounter times, geocentric miss distances and three-sigma bounds. MOID, PHA classification and Sentry probabilities retain their distinct source meanings.

Smooth aurora colors

The NOAA OVATION globe now uses a higher-resolution display raster, missing-aware bilinear interpolation and linear texture filtering. This removes block-like color steps while keeping a fixed 0–100% color scale. Interpolation wraps longitude across the date line and does not fill missing source cells or overshoot neighboring values. Rendering is performed in a bounded worker where supported, with an on-demand fallback.

• Layers → Smooth aurora colors (display only) switches between the smooth rendering and source-cell display.
• Overlay opacity changes visibility over the basemap. Aurora display threshold hides lower displayed values; it does not increase the published probabilities.
• North / South / World, city references, basemap selection, day/night and fullscreen remain available. Higher-quality globe antialiasing and a smoother day/night texture improve visual edges.
• A click still reports the exact nearest published grid node, not a newly observed/interpolated probability. Export displayed aurora grid exports the unchanged 360×181 source grid, with 255 reserved for missing values.
• Observation time, forecast-valid time and selected historical frame stay separate. Expired current fields are withheld; historical captured frames remain labelled. Smoothing does not add source resolution, a visibility guarantee or a system-failure probability. Clouds, local light pollution and the observer's horizon are not modeled.
• The smoothing switch applies to OVATION. GloTEC and regional geoelectric layers keep their own units, source-cell/support rules and interpretation.

Graphics, accessibility and recovery

The scene renders on demand, caps drawing-buffer size and releases hidden graphics. If WebGL 3D is unavailable, the original orbit chart and source tables remain available. A lost 3D context offers Retry 3D. Source failure clears the affected live evidence; reference planet geometry does not imply that asteroid data were successfully fetched. Account/replay changes clear selections and stop animation. No new paid model or provider collection is triggered by the camera controls.

Sources and visual credits

• NASA/JPL SSD approximate positions, Table 1, based on E. M. Standish and J. G. Williams (1992). Coefficients and fitted validity interval are retained; the interface limits scene dates to 2000–2049.
• NASA/JPL small-body API documentation for the existing orbital catalogue, CAD, Sentry, Scout and historical fireballs.
• NOAA SWPC OVATION model.
• Planet/Sun/ring textures: Solar System Scope / INOVE, source pack, CC BY 4.0. The source adjusts colors and artistically fills some unmapped terrain. These are illustrative textures, not current planetary observations. Images are hosted locally; credit remains visible on the scene and in object details.
• Three.js 0.180.0 and OrbitControls/Line2: MIT license. The pinned bundle and license are included in the release.

The Space Weather methods describe the full measurement, forecast, quality, temporal and coverage rules.