Stellar

Stellar is an interactive 3D Solar System. You steer it with hand gestures, ask an AI guide questions by voice, and explore other features like moons, spacecraft, habitability and asteroids.

Comment

**Project Description Examine the solar system within a few clicks (or hand motions!). This interactive 3D representation of the solar system provides an easy-to-use interface geared towards anyone who's interested in learning about the planets.

**Project features We implemented the following features:

  1. Home screen: A breath-taking animation of the solar system, with all planets orbiting around the centered sun.
  2. Bottom panel: Selecting a planet brings you a close-up, realistic view of the planet. For each planet, a simple description and beginner-friendly facts (diameter, distance from the sun, the time it takes for a full rotation & revolution, amount of moons) is presented.

  3. Top-right panel (From left to right):

    • ♪ Music (On/Off) and ≋ Music settings: Plays an ambient space soundtrack, with a different track for the overview, Motion Trails and each planet. Tracks fade smoothly into each other as you explore. The ≋ button adjusts the volume, and the music lowers itself whenever Stellar speaks.
    • 🗣 Voice (On/Off): Turns on Stellar's narration, powered by ElevenLabs. When you open a planet, a natural female voice introduces it in 2–3 sentences, with captions that follow her sentence by sentence. Transitions play cinematic whoosh sounds created with ElevenLabs Sound Effects.
    • Language setting: Switch the whole experience between three of the world's most widely spoken languages: English, Chinese and Spanish. The text, the narration and Stellar's spoken answers all follow your choice.
    • ↖ Solar System: Returns to the home screen, the full Solar System with the planets orbiting the Sun.
    • Habitability Lab: Choose up to four planets to compare temperature, sunlight, surface pressure and liquid-water conditions. Each one gets a similarity score showing how close its living conditions are to Earth's. -☄ Asteroid Analyzer: Explore asteroid impact-monitoring records from NASA's Sentry dataset: impact probabilities, energy, and the Palermo and Torino hazard scales. Its Orbit Explorer lets you search more than 42,000 near-Earth asteroids from Lowell Observatory's astorb catalog and animate each one's orbit around the Sun. -◎ Motion Trails: Shows the Solar System moving through space. The Sun travels forward while the planets trace glowing spiral trails, using real orbital shapes and periods. You can change the time speed, restart, switch camera angles or click a planet to explore it. -Compare Sizes: Lines up the Sun and all eight planets side by side at their true relative sizes. -Pause/Resume Orbits: Pauses or resumes the orbiting animation of the planets on the home screen. -✦ Astronomy Resources: A learning hub of trusted links (free textbooks, interactive sky maps, 3D simulations, scientific databases and space news) from sources such as OpenStax, NASA, JPL and ESA, filterable by category.
    • Enable Gestures (requires camera): Hold your hand up to your device's camera and control the experience with hand movements:
      • ☝ Point and hold over a planet to select it.
      • 🤏 Pinch to open a planet, and pinch while moving up or down to zoom.
      • ✋ Open your palm to rotate the Solar System or scatter a planet into particles.
      • ✊ Hold a fist to return to the home screen.
      • ✌ Make a victory sign to start talking to Stellar.

    A sensitivity slider adjusts how responsive the tracking is.

    • Talk (requires microphone): Ask Stellar a question out loud. Stellar, the AI space guide powered by Claude, answers in your language, and replies are spoken in the natural ElevenLabs voice. Voice commands such as "Go to Mars" or "Compare sizes" also move you around the app.

  4. Bottom of the screen:

    • Planet bar: Jump straight to the Sun or any planet.
    • Ask Stellar (bottom right): Opens the AI chat, where you can type or speak questions about whatever you're looking at. Turn on 🔊 to hear the answers read aloud.

  5. Planet close-up: When you open a planet, the info panel shows key facts plus a

    • Highlights section:
    • Moons: each moon is labelled and shown at its true size relative to the planet.
    • A living feature: for example, auroras, Mars' dust storms, Io's volcanic plumes or Neptune's racing winds.
    • A spacecraft moment: for example, Juno at Jupiter, Cassini at Saturn, or Perseverance on Mars.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates

Submission history