Cosmic Commotion

This visualization provides an interactive and engaging experience exploring the orbits of near-Earth comets. All the objects in the visualization are to-scale.

Marks

1. Lines: Representing the orbits of comets around the sun.

2. Points: Depicting the comets themselves as they move along their orbits.

3. Images: Displaying the sun's position and adding a visual anchor for the orbits.

Channels

1. Position: Used to illustrate the comets' movement along their orbits relative to the sun and other comets. This follows Kepler's 2nd Law and plots a combination of eccentricity (e), time period (TP), distance at perihelion (q) distance at aphelion (Q), and orbital period (P) all normalized and scaled down.

2. Size: Depending on the Minimum Orbit Intersection Distance (MOID).

Interactions

1. Mouseover: Revealing detailed information about the comets in a tooltip.

2. Click: Dismissing the tooltip and reducing the opacity of comet paths when clicked.

Category: Combinatorial Visualization

The "Cosmic Commotion: Charting Celestial Trajectories" visualization is combinatorial, integrating lines for comet orbits, circles for comets, and an image of the sun. Interactive tooltips display comet details when hovering, and real-time animation shows comets in motion for a dynamic experience.

Instructions for Execution

1. On VSCode, install the Live Server extension here.

2. Clone and open the repository on VSCode on your local machine.

3. Click on Go Live at the bottom right to run the live server.