THE COSMOS
Faint plane: ecliptic · pink orbit: Pluto · positions fixed to the reference date
Connecting real coordinates to the 3D world.
DISTANCE. DETAIL. DISCOVERY.
Every object has a position inside its parent. Zooming never inflates an object’s size. Objects smaller than the screen get a clickable position marker. Markers and the glow of starlight do not show the diameter of an object’s surface.
The number at the bottom is the width of the focal plane, which faces the camera. The scale bar is calculated directly from that width. Objects at other depths look different because of perspective. Distance is measured from the camera to the current focus.
The same amount of scrolling gives the same zoom factor anywhere. Going from a 1,000 km to a 100 km to a 10 km screen width, each step is the same logarithmic interval. Pinching applies the change in distance between your two fingers directly. Zooming and moving toward the next position happen together.
Solar system positions: NASA JPL Horizons, 2026-09-21 00:00 TDB, heliocentric J2000 ecliptic coordinates. Positions are fixed to this reference date. Orbit lines are ellipses calculated from JPL osculating orbital elements for the same date. They include the real eccentricity, inclination and perihelion direction, but are not paths integrated over long-term perturbations.
Earth: a spherical approximation with a mean radius of 6,371 km, plus surface imagery. Regional terrain uses USGS elevation data from Mapzen Terrain Tiles and NASA Blue Marble regional imagery. The ground around the square is flattened so the buildings sit on it properly. Buildings on the outskirts of Seoul are representative models placed along the roads. The reference point at Gwanghwamun is 37.57295°N, 126.97685°E. Building and road outlines come from OpenStreetMap; heights for buildings without height data, and detailed shapes, are estimated. Hand-built fixtures are not precise surveyed reconstructions.
Galaxy layouts and the insides of living things are illustrative models scaled to representative sizes. They are not observational catalogs or measurements of any particular body. Cutaway views turn on once you go inside the skin. The length shown for quarks is not a measured diameter, and the Planck range is a comparison of theoretical lengths.
Regional imagery: NASA GIBS Blue Marble (2004 composite); Seoul and Jongno: Sentinel-2 cloudless by EOX IT Services GmbH (Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2016 & 2017), CC BY 4.0. Terrain: Mapzen / USGS SRTM·GMTED2010, NOAA ETOPO1. Full terrain data credits. The regional imagery, maps and elevation data are not from the same date. The paving and stone textures come from Poly Haven CC0 photos, not photos taken at Gwanghwamun itself.
JPL Horizons ↗NASA Earth fact sheet ↗OpenStreetMap · ODbL ↗NIST ↗