AstroGrid

Hey IH 👋

I just shipped AstroGrid, a 3D universe engine that runs entirely in your browser. No install, no login, no plugin. Just a URL.

What it actually is

You start near Earth. Spin the solar system. Watch Jupiter's moons trace their real JPL orbits. Pull back until the Sun is a single pixel inside the Milky Way. Pull back further and the galaxy itself becomes a dot in a field of 14,000 others.

Everything is real data:

• 119,000 stars (HYG v3.8)

• Every planet and moon on actual J2000 orbital elements

• 14,000 deep-sky objects (OpenNGC)

• Black holes with GLSL gravitational lensing

• Pulsars rotating on their actual ATNF catalog periods

• Time slider from 1 second/sec to 1 year/sec

Why I built it

Free data, free WebGL, browsers everywhere. Yet no one had built a real 3D universe you could just open, so I did. The best simulators are paid or need beefy hardware. The free ones are stuck in 2D. A curious 10-year-old anywhere in the world should be able to fly to a black hole with nothing but a URL.

Where I'm at

• Live: https://velonspace.com/

• Screenshots : https://velonspace.com/guide/screenshots

• Free, no account needed

• Solo founder, building in public from here on

• Revenue: $0 (and that's fine for now, focus is on getting the experience right)

What I'd love from you

1. Try it for 60 seconds and tell me the first thing that broke or felt off

2. If you teach, study, or just love astronomy, what's missing that would make you come back?

Thanks for reading.