Library Orrery

Every book a planet: the older the book, the farther out and the slower it crawls. The sun is you, today. ← Jack V. Le

live

controls

Find a book flies the camera there

Time

view

Conjunctions as seen from the sun

Genres click to isolate

Each book's orbital period grows with its age (T = 0.25 + 0.016 · age^1.5 years) and its distance follows from Kepler's third law, so this year's books whizz round in months while Gilgamesh has not yet finished a single lap. An author with several books becomes a moon system on a shared orbit. Undated books drift in the Oort cloud. Phases are fixed at 2000.0, so everyone sees the same sky at the same moment.

Drag to pan, wheel or pinch to zoom, hover for a book, click to pin. space play, ← → step, N now. Data: Jack's library catalogue (assets/data/library.json). Nothing leaves your browser.

Tonight from the sunreading the sky…

The orrery needs the catalogue to have anything to orbit; the stars and the sun still render.