Show HN: Generate animated solar system timelapse videos for any date range
SimonDorfman Wednesday, January 21, 2026
A fork of Solar System Live that generates animated videos showing planetary orbits over any date range. Tracks orbital statistics (how many times Earth was lapped by Mercury/Venus, or lapped outer planets) and overlays dates/ages on each frame.
Example: Einstein's lifetime (1879-1955) showing 76 years of solar system evolution. Built with Python + Pillow + ffmpeg, runs locally with Lighttpd.
https://github.com/simondorfman/solar_system_live
Summary
This project provides a live visualization of the solar system, allowing users to observe the positions and movements of the planets in real-time. It utilizes the WebGL and ThreeJS libraries to create an interactive, browser-based simulation of our planetary neighborhood.
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github.com