Orrery

Visualization showing the orbits of minor planets and their discovery over time.

The data we use is maintained by The Minor Planet Center (MPC). We use two separate datasets (which are updated daily) to extract the orbital elements and discovery circumstances of minor planets:

• The MPC Orbit (MPCORB) Database Database containing orbital elements of minor planets.

• NumberedMPs.txt Discovery circumstances of the minor planets.

How to start

Install dependencies using npm install.
Start server using npm run start.
Build and bundle using npm run build.
Watch changes and rebuild using npm run watch.

Get updated data

Data files are stored in the data directory. You can either download the data files manually using the links above, or use the download script:

Download the data and parse it to JSON:

cd data
./download_data.sh && ./data_to_json.py

There are over 500k results, so the output JSON file will be rather large and will be heavy to render. You can limit the maximum amount of results by passing a number as an argument:

./data_to_json.py 9999