Planetary System Simulator

Inspiration

I always loved space and loved looking at the stars. I also wondered how the solar system would be and was formed, I have a keen interest in astronomy and love to program. and taking our solar system as a start I thought of simulating planetary systems and have people interact with them, add suns, moons, planet, throw them at each other and have loads of other fun all the while making the program accessible to everyone online.

What it does

My program basically simulates planetary systems and shows orbits, planets and stars. people can add, understand and remove planets from the simulator, this helps understand a lot of the different physical and astronomical concepts and visualize them to make it easier for them to grasp these concepts as well.

How I built it

I have used the online module Vpython to create this program with complex and different functions of gravity based on and differing on masses and orbital plotter functions that would plot the orbit of the planets/stars/moons including variables such as eccentricity, periapsis, semi-major axes and other orbital elements. Vpython also has various mathematical functions to make it easier for me to calculate the values. Vpython is a 3D engine and using different spheres and textures I was able to simulate planets and using buttons I was able to add the functionality of the program.

Challenges I ran into

Plotting the orbits was the hardest part including the computations of all the planets when the user continues to add more although it was resolved with a little bit of research and a lot of head-scratching