- Author
- Posted by d_silin, with replies from many commenters
- Published
- 10 October 2024
- Kind
- Hacker News thread about an open-source asteroid visualization
- Original
- news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41804127
- Subject
- Space and orbital simulation
- Themes
- Art through code
What it is
The thread sits under a link to a GitHub project called Orbidium. The poster, d_silin, says a team from Exodus Orbitals wrote the demo. Commenters ask how to read the picture.
What it says
- The poster says the demo plots all 1.4M asteroids, each as part of its ellipse.
- The poster says fewer than a hundred asteroids have an apoapsis inside Earth's orbit.
- One commenter says discoveries cluster in directions facing away from Earth.
- A commenter argues the Kirkwood gaps should not show up in an accurate simulation.
- After switching to random orbit positions, the poster says the belt gaps were rendering artifacts.
- The poster says true positions need ephemeris data. The demo is mostly a visualization.
What evidence it gives
The thread offers argument and the poster's description of the code. A commenter points to a video of discoveries over time. Nobody in the thread publishes measurements.
Interests and limits
The poster belongs to the team that made the demo and links a sign-up list. The linked repository was not read. Two commenters talk past each other on the gaps. One commenter replies that the gaps are a real physical phenomenon. Claims come from commenters and were not checked.