A Tour of the Solar System
A working orrery — every planet on its true Keplerian orbit, with great conjunctions, a planet parade, comet flybys and the Voyager grand-tour routes.
▶ Premiering soon on Instagram & YouTube
The story
This is an orrery — a working model of the solar system. Every planet sits on its real orbit and moves at its true relative speed, calculated with the same Keplerian mechanics that guide spacecraft. Mercury races around in 88 days while Neptune barely creeps; speed the clock up and the whole system turns into a piece of clockwork.
As the years tick by, the clock pauses to spotlight real events: rare great conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, a "parade" with every planet lined up on one side of the Sun, comet and interstellar-visitor flybys, and the actual Voyager grand-tour routes traced from planet to planet across the 1970s and 80s.