When a website is beautiful to look at and, above all, provides an educational service of absolutely great value, it must be pointed out and underlined by tracing it several times. Solar System Scope is an incredible website that shows, in 3D graphics like a kind of Google Earth, the solar system, where you can click on the various points of space to zoom in or move between the planets that go around the sun. If you have a large monitor you can really enjoy the spectacular images and how much you can travel in space in a fluid and fast way, by clicking on the various points and moving the entire planetarium with the mouse.
1) Solar System Scope is not only a fixed model of the planetarium but shows the position of the planets in this exact hour . It is therefore a live tool with which to explore the solar system in real time. On the left side there are the navigation controls and, from the central "View" button, you can change the point of view on the screen. You can then view the planetarium of the solar system by placing the Sun at the center of the universe or by placing the Earth at the center (geocentric vision) or by looking, in a panoramic way, from the Earth, as if you were using a telescope to observe the sky at 360 degrees .
For this option you can choose the observation point which, by default is Greenwich but which can be changed, from the settings menu, with New York, Paris, London, Beijing and other points on planet Earth. Some features such as searching for stars and planets are not yet functional. However, the nomenclature for the stars works and, passing the mouse and clicking around the space, you will see the names of each single celestial body.
2) So if online telescopes allow you to know more information, this Solar System Scope is graphically one of the best astronomy sites for the planets of the solar system. In fact, not even on Google Earth is there such a level of 3D graphics to see how Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Mars and Venus turn around the Sun. At the bottom, you can press the Play button to start the simulation of the movement of the planets around the Sun and the rotation on their axis, which can be reproduced more or less quickly, with extreme realism.
3) Another website where you can navigate the 3D solar system via the web is NASA's Solar System, an interactive planetarium to explore using the mouse and keyboard, in full screen.
Although I will spend less words to not repeat myself, this site is at the same level of quality as Solar System Scope, although different in the type of graphics and approach.
4) If you wanted a program to see how the solar system moves in 3D, seen from different points, stars and planets, you can download the open source simulator Solar Model .
5) Even more powerful is the SpaceEngine program, a real space simulator to see the whole universe and the planets of the solar system move with a very high realism.
With Space Engine it is possible to search and find anything, star, planet, constellation or anything else that moves in the known universe.
6) TransferCalculator is a free solar system simulator where you can calculate transfers in interplanetary space on all planets.
