looking for virtual, live map of space?

Question

hello everyone, ive been looking for a live virtual map of space which contains everything trackable in our galaxy so it shows where earth is where the sun is where other stars and planets are etc as they are moving around in space. does anything like this exist? the closest thing ive found is a virtual map but it isnt live so nothing is in the right position though it does show some orbit paths.

Answer 1

Live, as in updated real-time, isn't necessary for objects in space. Everything in the solar system travels in predictable paths, so their positions can be calculated based on simple Newtonian physics for any date within thousands of years, maybe more. There are some free downloadable programs for the PC that will do this, Celestia and Stellarium for example. The stars themselves change position in the sky so slowly that there will be no noticable changes in them for hundreds of years.



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A shooting star lasts maybe a second, then it's gone. Not enough time to post a live update in time for you to see it. This reminds me, however, of periodic comets that show up unexpected. I've seen 3 in my lifetime that were not known about until then, and don't show up in any software. That might be useful, but only on rare occasions.

Answer 2

Stellarium and Celestia both do that, in different ways.

Answer 3

http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/

http://astro.uchicago.edu/cosmus/projects/sloangalaxies/animations.html

http://www.sdss.org/