Name: MetaWorldOS Universe — Interactive 3D Solar System
Availability: InStock
Author: MetaWorldOS

Question 1

What is the MetaWorldOS Universe page?

Accepted Answer

A free, browser-based interactive 3D universe. It includes an Exoplanet Atlas (12 famous star systems with star, orbits, habitable zones), a Cosmic Zoom (Powers-of-Ten ride from solar system to cosmic web), a geolocated Tonight's Sky panel, a Mission Feeds dashboard with NASA / NOAA live data, real-time planetary orbits from Mercury to Pluto, accurate lunar phases, live positions of the ISS, the Hubble telescope, the full SpaceX Starlink constellation (6,000+ satellites), a SpaceX Live monitor, comets, asteroids, and the major moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Question 2

What does the Exoplanet Atlas show?

Accepted Answer

The Exoplanet Atlas is a curated collection of 12 famous star systems — TRAPPIST-1, Proxima Centauri, Kepler-186, Kepler-452 ("Earth's older cousin"), 51 Pegasi (the first exoplanet around a sun-like star), K2-18 (sub-Neptune with a possible water-rich atmosphere), Tau Ceti, Kepler-90 (8 planets), Kepler-62, Gliese 667 C, TOI-700, and Wolf 1061 — each with a Three.js mini-scene showing the host star (sized and colored by spectral type), planet orbits, the conservative habitable zone, and click-to-inspect planet details (semi-major axis, period, radius, mass, equilibrium temperature, classification). Data sourced from the NASA Exoplanet Archive.

Question 3

What is the Cosmic Zoom mode?

Accepted Answer

Cosmic Zoom is a Powers-of-Ten ride: a single 3D scene with five layered visualizations — solar system, stellar neighborhood, Milky Way disk, Local Group, cosmic web — that fade in and out as you scrub a logarithmic scale slider from ~10 AU to ~46 billion light-years. Clicking Play auto-animates the slider so you can sit back and watch the universe expand from a few astronomical units to the observable horizon.

Question 4

Is the Universe page accessible to screen-reader and color-blind users?

Accepted Answer

Yes. An Accessibility panel in the sidebar exposes (1) a Wong/Okabe color-blind safe palette that swaps every planet and satellite orbit color into hues distinguishable under deutan, protan, and tritan vision; (2) a screen-reader narration toggle that announces 'Camera focused on Mars (Planet). Radius … Orbital period … …' through an aria-live region whenever the camera focuses on a body; (3) keyboard shortcuts — digits 1-9 jump to Mercury → Pluto, 0 jumps to the Sun, O toggles all orbit paths, L toggles labels, ? opens the panel, Esc resets the view. Both toggles persist in localStorage.

Question 5

How does the Cinematic Recorder work?

Accepted Answer

Click Record Clip in the sidebar, type a one-line subtitle, pick a duration (6 / 15 / 30 seconds), and hit Start. After a 3-2-1 countdown the live scene is captured to a 1080×1920 vertical clip with the subtitle, a watermark, and a progress bar burned in. The export hands off via the Web Share API on mobile (so it lands directly in TikTok, Reels, Xiaohongshu, or WeChat) and falls back to a download on desktop. Move the camera, switch stories, or fly through the Starlink constellation while it's recording — everything you see is what gets captured.

Question 6

How does the Tonight's Sky panel work?

Accepted Answer

It uses your browser geolocation (or a manual fallback) to compute when the ISS, Tiangong, and Hubble are visible from your location over the next 5 nights — including rise/peak/set times, compass bearings, peak elevation in degrees, duration, and estimated brightness. It also shows the moon phase, sunrise/sunset, the astronomical-dark "spotting window" for satellite observation, and a curated list of upcoming meteor showers and eclipses filtered to your region.

Question 7

What is in the Mission Feeds dashboard?

Accepted Answer

Four live data streams: (1) NASA CNEOS — near-Earth asteroids passing within 0.05 AU in the next 60 days, with miss distance, size, velocity, approach time; (2) NOAA SWPC — current Kp index, geomagnetic storm level, sunspot number, and X/M-class solar flares from the last 24 hours; (3) Deep-space probes — Voyager 1/2 distance and light-time, Parker Solar Probe perihelion, JWST observation cycle; (4) Mars rovers — Curiosity and Perseverance sol counter, landing sites, and the latest raw image from each rover.

Question 8

How does the SpaceX Live monitor work?

Accepted Answer

The SpaceX Live panel pulls upcoming and recent SpaceX launches from The Space Devs Launch Library 2 (filtered to lsp__name=SpaceX) and lifetime stats from the community-maintained SpaceX-API. It shows a hero card with a 1-second-tick countdown to the next Falcon 9 / Falcon Heavy / Starship launch, the latest mission with a success/failure pill, an upcoming list, a recent past list, and a stats strip (total launches, landings, reflights, last-10 success rate). It auto-refreshes every 5 minutes while open.

Question 9

How does the Starlink visualization work?

Accepted Answer

When you turn on the Starlink layer, the page bulk-fetches the active Starlink constellation TLE from Celestrak in a single request, propagates each satellite client-side using SGP4, and renders all 6,000+ as a single InstancedMesh. TLE is cached for 12 hours via stale-while-revalidate, and propagation is split across frame batches so the constellation stays smooth at 60 fps.

Question 10

Is the planetary motion astronomically accurate?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Orbits are driven by the J2000.0 epoch with Kepler propagation, the Moon uses an ELP-2000/82 simplified model with phase shading from real Sun direction, and satellite positions (ISS, Hubble, Starlink, BeiDou, GLONASS, etc.) update every frame from live Celestrak TLE via SGP4.

Question 11

Do I need a VR headset to use it?

Accepted Answer

No. The default experience runs in any modern browser on desktop, tablet, or phone. WebXR VR/AR mode is optional — if you have a Quest, Vision Pro, or compatible headset, the same scene streams into immersive 6DoF view.

Question 12

What can I learn here?

Accepted Answer

Click any body to read AI-generated explanations covering size, distance, orbital period, atmosphere, and notable facts. Cosmic Stories — like "Grand Tour of the Solar System", "The Moon Landing Story", and the comet-tracking "Comet Chase" — guide the camera through narrated cinematic scenes.

Question 13

Is it free?

Accepted Answer

Yes — the entire 3D Universe, all stories, the virtual classroom, AI explanations, the live Starlink constellation visualization, the SpaceX Live monitor, Tonight's Sky, and the Mission Feeds dashboard are free, with no signup required.

My Birthday Sky

My Birthday Sky