Fly a 3D solar system, image an exoplanet through the Sun's own gravity, browse JWST's infrared sky, and map 2,700+ Kepler worlds. Every datum is real, sourced, and dated - drawn live from NASA, ESA, STScI, NOAA, and CSIRO.
The Solar System explorer - real orbital mechanics, 8 planets, 16 tidally-locked moons, a true-scale toggle, and an Earth Dive.
Eight explorers, one dark-sky instrument aesthetic. Deep space void backgrounds, stellar-gold accents, tabular data readouts. Built for the curious - a 14-year-old can navigate it, and the numbers are all real.
| Explorer | Route | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Solar System | /solar-system |
Photorealistic 3D orbits, true-scale toggle, galaxy zoom-out, Earth Dive |
| Gravitational Lens Telescope | /gravitational-lens |
The Solar Gravitational Lens mission concept, act by act |
| JWST Explorer | /jwst |
85 Webb observations with NIRCam/MIRI wavelength switching |
| Kepler Exoplanets | /kepler |
2,700+ confirmed worlds in an interactive stellar field |
| Sky Map | /sky-map |
The whole celestial sphere across radio, infrared, optical, and X-ray |
| Explore Gallery | /explore |
132 curated JWST, Hubble, and Australian radio observations |
| Live Events | /events |
Live ISS position, solar weather, meteor showers, launches |
| Spacecraft | /spacecraft |
Space telescopes, probes, and stations reference |
A standalone, interactive walkthrough of the Solar Gravitational Lens mission concept (NASA/JPL NIAC, Turyshev et al) - flying a solar-sail spacecraft past 650 AU to use the Sun's gravity as a lens and image an exoplanet's surface. Eight acts, each with a scripted Tour and a free-camera Explore mode: why JWST can't do this, how gravity bends light, the focal line, the sundiver trajectory, the string of pearls, the Einstein-ring imaging dance, the real stellar neighbourhood, and a lens-to-lens comms epilogue.
Real physics throughout (test-verified against published anchors), dramatised visuals clearly labelled as such. It is a separate Vite + Three.js app (m4cd4r4/550-AU), built and vendored into public/embeds/ and served in a same-origin iframe - fully offline, no external calls at runtime.
Solar System - accurate orbital mechanics, an Earth Dive descent, and a True Scale toggle that rescales all 8 planets and 16 moons to their real relative sizes (Phobos and Deimos shrink to near-invisible captured-asteroid specks). Every moon stays tidally locked, keeping one face to its parent. Zoom out to see the Sun's place in the Milky Way.
JWST Explorer - 85 curated Webb observations with NIRCam/MIRI wavelength switching, feature annotations scoped precisely to image bounds, a Hubble comparison mode, and deep links into the Sky Map.
Kepler Exoplanets - a live NASA Exoplanet Archive query rendering 2,700+ confirmed planets across Sky, Galaxy, and HR-diagram views. Opens on a genuinely weird world (Kepler-16b, the real Tatooine) with the full catalogue one click away. Filter by size, stellar temperature, orbital period, and habitable zone.
Sky Map - the entire celestial sphere via Aladin Lite, with a first-class spectrum switcher (CMB, mid-IR, near-IR, optical, UV, gamma) and a live RA/Dec/FoV readout. Search any object; JWST markers deep-link back to their observation pages.
Live Events - real ISS position on a world map, a live solar-activity gauge from NOAA SWPC, upcoming meteor showers, launches from Launch Library 2, and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day.
| Layer | Choice |
|---|---|
| Framework | Next.js 14 (App Router), React 18, TypeScript (strict) |
| Styling | Tailwind CSS 3, Radix UI primitives |
| 3D / viz | Three.js (r183), Aladin Lite, Leaflet, HTML canvas |
| State / data | Zustand, TanStack Query |
| Motion | Framer Motion + CSS keyframes (reduced-motion honoured) |
| Platform | PWA (offline-capable), Vercel |
Every readout is real and attributed. Nothing is invented or decorative.
| Source | Data | Access |
|---|---|---|
| STScI MAST | JWST, Hubble observations | Public API |
| NASA Exoplanet Archive | Kepler exoplanets | Public TAP |
| NASA APIs | APOD, Near-Earth Objects | API key (server-side) |
| NOAA SWPC | Solar X-ray flux, space weather | Public |
| Where the ISS at | Live ISS position | Public |
| Launch Library 2 | Upcoming launches | Public |
| Aladin Lite / CDS | Multi-wavelength sky surveys | Public |
| CSIRO CASDA | ASKAP radio data | Public TAP |
Dark-first, always. Deep space void backgrounds with astronomy-authentic accents pulled from real emission lines and stellar cores.
| Role | Token | Hex |
|---|---|---|
| Deep space void | cosmos-void |
#0a0e1a |
| Stellar gold (primary) | cosmos-gold |
#d4af37 |
| Infrared amber | cosmos-amber |
#ff9a3c |
| Reflection-nebula blue | cosmos-nebula-blue |
#4a90e2 |
| H-alpha red | cosmos-hydrogen |
#ff6b6b |
Type: Outfit (display) · Inter (body) · JetBrains Mono (data and timestamps, tabular numerals). WCAG 2.1 AA, keyboard navigable, prefers-reduced-motion treated as a first-class experience.
git clone https://github.com/m4cd4r4/cosmos-collective-v2.git
cd cosmos-collective-v2
npm install
cp .env.example .env.local # add NASA_API_KEY (free at api.nasa.gov)
npm run devOpen http://localhost:3000.
The Gravitational Lens embed is a vendored build. To refresh it after an upstream change, see public/embeds/gravitational-lens/README.md.
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
npm run dev |
Development server |
npm run build |
Production build (type-checked and linted) |
npm run start |
Serve the production build |
npm test |
Vitest unit tests |
npm run type-check |
tsc --noEmit |
Hosted on Vercel. Production deploys are manual (vercel --prod) - pushing to main does not auto-deploy.
- NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI - JWST and Hubble imagery and data
- NASA Exoplanet Archive - Kepler mission data
- NOAA SWPC - space weather
- CSIRO - Australian radio telescope data
- CDS Strasbourg - Aladin Lite sky viewer
- 550-AU - the embedded Solar Gravitational Lens simulation (MIT)
- The open-source community, for the tools that made this possible
MIT - see LICENSE.