Moment in Orbit
Where were the planets the moment your child was born? On your wedding day? Pick the date, and keep it as a free poster or give it as a gift.
This is the solar system right now. Enter a date to see it on a day that matters to you.
Drag the picture to turn it. The planets stay in their real positions; only your viewpoint moves.
To use it, open the picture on your phone and set it as your wallpaper. Made it on a computer? Send the file to your phone first.
To use it on Windows, right-click the downloaded picture and choose “Set as desktop background”. On a Mac, add it under Wallpaper in System Settings.
Printed and framed, it makes a very personal gift. For someone else’s moment, just change the date and make another.
- For the moments that matterA newborn, a wedding, the day you met, a birthday. Add a name or a title, print it and frame it, and you have a very personal gift.
- The real positionsCalculated for your date and time, and checked against NASA’s numbers.
- For your wall, phone or computerSharp enough to print at A3 size and hang on the wall, tall or wide, or to use as the wallpaper on your phone or computer.
- Free and privateNo sign-up. The name, date and time you enter stay on your device.
The planets are in their real directions for that date and time (in your device’s time zone; even 12 hours would move Earth by only half a degree). Sizes and distances are not to scale: Neptune is really 30 times farther from the Sun than Earth, and the moons are really much farther from their planets. The orbits keep their real shapes, and each coloured line is the path its planet has just travelled. The surfaces come from real maps, but they are there for looks: they don’t show how each planet was turned at that moment. The tilted view is the same map seen at an angle, so nearer planets look larger. The small Moon beside the date shows its real shape at that moment, as seen from the northern half of the world; from the southern half it looks mirrored. Shown: our Moon, Jupiter’s four largest moons and Saturn’s largest, Titan. Any date from 1900 to 2099.
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