The Solar System in 3D — Live
An interactive, live map of the solar system: all eight planets, six dwarf planets and large asteroids, and 22 major moons — each placed at the position it actually occupies today.
Exploring the solar system
Take the guided tour
Scroll from the Sun outward and the camera flies world to world — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, the gas giants, and on to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt — with a short story for each one along the way.
Fly to any world
Click a planet, dwarf planet or moon to travel to it and see its size, day length, year length, moon count and distance from the Sun.
Speed up time
Wind the clock forward and watch the planets pull ahead of one another — inner worlds racing around while Neptune barely shifts, making orbital periods immediately obvious.
See the moon systems
Jupiter's Galilean moons, Saturn's Titan and Enceladus, Neptune's backwards-orbiting Triton and more, each circling its parent planet.
Planet positions are calculated from JPL's Keplerian orbital elements, the same published element sets used for real mission planning, evaluated for the current date rather than drawn from a fixed illustration. Distances are rendered to true scale, one astronomical unit per scene unit, which is what makes the emptiness obvious: the four rocky planets huddle near the Sun while Neptune sits thirty times further out than Earth. Body sizes are drawn larger than true scale relative to those distances, because a genuinely to-scale Earth at that spacing would be smaller than a single pixel and impossible to find. The result is a solar system you can actually navigate, where the orbits, the positions and the relationships between worlds are real even though the planets themselves are enlarged enough to see.
Frequently asked questions
Are the planet positions real?
Yes. Every planet, dwarf planet and moon is placed using real Keplerian orbital elements — the same JPL data used for ephemerides — computed live in your browser for the current date. Speed up, pause or jump time and the positions stay astronomically correct, accurate from roughly 1800 to 2050.
Is the solar system model to scale?
Distances are exactly to scale: one scene unit is one astronomical unit (the Earth–Sun distance). True planet sizes would be invisible at that scale, so a body-size slider morphs between true scale and a stylised view — the default exaggerates sizes for visibility while keeping every orbit real.
Which moons can I see?
Twenty-two major moons on their real orbital planes: our Moon; Mars's Phobos and Deimos; Jupiter's Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto; Saturn's Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan and Iapetus; Uranus's Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon; and Neptune's Proteus, Triton and Nereid.
Can I fast-forward time?
Yes — from paused up to 60 simulated days per second. Watch Mercury lap the Sun, Jupiter's moons whirl, or scrub years ahead to see the planets rearrange. One click brings you back to today.
Is it free? Do I need to install anything?
Completely free, right in your browser — no download, no sign-up. It's part of AstroSat, which also tracks thousands of Earth satellites in real time on a live 3D globe.