The Solar System Simulation is a real-time interactive model of all eight planets orbiting the Sun, rendered in a top-down 2D view. Orbital distances and periods are drawn to scale, so the outer planets sit very far out; planet and Sun sizes are greatly exaggerated, because at true scale the planets would be far too small to see. Click any planet to open its key physical data: mass, diameter, orbital period, distance from the Sun, and number of moons.
The orbital animation is driven by Kepler's laws of planetary motion: each planet's orbital period grows with its distance from the Sun, so the inner planets circle much faster than the outer ones (planet orbits are drawn as circles; only the comets follow elongated paths). The simulation includes the eight planets, some dwarf planets, comets and major moons, giving a sense of how the inner rocky planets orbit much faster than the outer gas giants. Speed controls allow the simulation to run at accelerated time to observe multiple orbital cycles.