Orbinauts is a live map of 32,000 objects in orbit: the ISS, Hubble and every satellite, rocket body and piece of debris. Their orbits come from Space-Track and their positions are worked out in your browser, so the map keeps moving between refreshes; follow one for its ground track, its footprint and the next time it passes over you.
How to read the map
- The dashed line is the next orbit and the thin line behind it the previous one, or 6 hours each way for an orbit longer than 24 hours.
- Either line fades where the satellite is in the Earth's shadow.
- The white spotlight is where the satellite is above the horizon right now.
- The darker bands are twilight and night.
On a window at least 1024 pixels wide, with Several, by the search, the map follows up to six at once, each with a panel of its own: a press on a marker adds it, or unfollows it if you follow it already, and a Shift-press adds one without choosing Several first. Draw only what the map follows, the button above the zoom buttons, leaves what you follow alone over the Earth. The U key hides the controls over the map and brings them back, leaving the panels and the names; a press on the map away from any marker does the same, except on One, where that press unfollows what the map follows, as it always has.
The buttons at the foot of the map are its tools. Filters chooses what it draws, by what each thing is and the orbit it flies, and what you follow is drawn whatever you choose; Settings sets how the map looks and the units it reads in, kept on this device. On a window at least 1024 pixels wide, Widgets chooses which Widgets stand beside the map and in what order, and Playback turns the map to another moment, up to a week back or ahead.
Orbits from Space-Track.