Data & Credits

Aetherion is built on public scientific data and open-source software. Positions are computed live in your browser; knowledge refreshes weekly.

Scientific data

Planetary positions: JPL “Approximate Positions of the Planets” Keplerian elements (E. M. Standish, NASA/JPL), plus a low-precision lunar theory. Accurate to roughly arcminutes for 1800–2050. Not for navigation.
Live satellites: orbital element sets from CelesTrak (Dr. T.S. Kelso), refreshed every six hours and propagated with SGP4.
Stars: ~41,000 stars to magnitude 8 from the HYG Database (David Nash, CC BY-SA 2.5), via the d3-celestial project (Olaf Frohn, BSD-3-Clause). Constellation figures from d3-celestial.
Exoplanets: NASA Exoplanet Archive (Caltech/IPAC), Planetary Systems Composite Parameters, refreshed weekly.
Close approaches: NASA JPL Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) close-approach data API.
Weekly knowledge: public news feeds from NASA and ESA, and new astrophysics preprints from arXiv.org, summarized by Aetherion each week. Always check the original sources linked in the digest.
Earth imagery: NASA Visible Earth / Blue Marble and Black Marble (public domain), as packaged by the three-globe project (MIT).
Galaxies, nebulae and the cosmic web are procedurally generated artistic representations placed at their real sky positions and distances. Their shapes are illustrative, not survey data.

three.js (MIT) for 3D rendering.
satellite.js (MIT) for SGP4 orbit propagation.
Fonts: Cinzel, Manrope and JetBrains Mono (SIL Open Font License) via Google Fonts.
Aetherion’s answers are generated by xAI Grok, grounded in the sources above. AI can make mistakes; verify anything important.

Aetherion, its character and this site are original works. Built in the Coachella Valley.