Void

How it works

Drawing. A 3D scene, ray-marched on your graphics card (WebGL2) with up to 12 samples per character cell. Each cell picks a glyph by brightness, from a ramp measured from the font's own ink, and keeps its colour; flat edges become - or _. Drawn at up to your screen's full pixel density, over a soft glow; a slower device gets a lighter version.

Physics. Orbits are solved with Kepler's equation (Barker's for a comet on a near-parabolic orbit), from Horizons elements for the comets and JPL's approximate elements for the planets. A tail points where observers report it, or away from the Sun if nobody gives an angle. For your sky, Earth is turned by the IAU rotation angle for this moment, which gives altitude and azimuth from where you are. The black-hole story's last stage follows Peters (1964).

Data. Comets: JPL Horizons orbits (the Minor Planet Center's list if Horizons is down), with brightness, coma and tail from two weeks of COBS reports (refreshed every 6 h). Asteroids: JPL's close-approach data and Horizons tracks (6 h). Aurora: NOAA SWPC Kp (10 min). Launches: Launch Library 2 by The Space Devs (hourly), times in UTC. In the atlas, satellites from CelesTrak (6 h).

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