Colophon · Updated May 2026

Credits.

This site stands on the work of thousands of scientists, engineers, photographers, and open-source contributors. Here is who, and where to find them.

Built and maintained by Polyxmedia. The viewer is free, has no signup, and ships with all source attributions intact. Where licences require attribution, the original source is linked below — most notably NASA imagery (public domain) and Solar System Scope textures (CC BY 4.0).

Imagery & textures

• NASA Public-domain photographs, surface and atmosphere imagery, and mission archives that anchor every body in the viewer.
• Solar System Scope High-resolution planet, moon, and sky textures (CC BY 4.0). The 4K and 8K spheres you see on every world come from here.
• ESO — European Southern Observatory Milky Way panorama and deep-sky imagery used in the starfield backdrop.
• NASA / JPL — Voyager, Cassini, Galileo, New Horizons, Juno, Perseverance The mission imagery underlying the surface texture for every body in the outer solar system.

Data sources

• NASA Planetary Fact Sheets Authoritative reference for every planetary number on this site — diameters, distances, orbital periods, axial tilts.
• JPL Horizons Ephemeris data for positions and orbital parameters of comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, and the major bodies.
• IAU Minor Planet Center Designations and orbital elements for asteroids and near-Earth objects.
• Wikipedia & Wikidata Cross-referenced for every body for additional context, named-entity links, and consistency checks.

Rendering, audio & animation

• Three.js WebGL engine that powers the entire 3D viewer — meshes, custom GLSL shaders, post-processing, and the live planet thumbnails on the homepage.
• GSAP — GreenSock Animation Platform Camera fly-throughs, panel transitions, and the cinematic narrative animations.
• Tone.js Procedural ambient soundtrack — pads, drones, sub bass, and the ascending arpeggios you hear in the viewer.
• Vite Build tool and dev server.
• Vitest Test runner.

Open standards

• WebGL 2.0 & GLSL The graphics standard the viewer relies on. The Sun, Earth, and atmosphere shaders are written in GLSL ES.
• glTF 2.0 Format for the spacecraft and probe models that appear in the viewer.
• Schema.org & Wikidata Structured-data vocabulary used across every page so search engines and AI assistants can understand what each body is.

Inspiration

• Carl Sagan For teaching the world that rigour and wonder belong together.
• Eyes on the Solar System (NASA/JPL) The benchmark for what a real-time, accurate, browser-based solar system viewer should feel like.
• Apollo For Earthrise.

Found something missing?

If you spot a credit we should add — a texture artist, a data source, an open-source project — let us know via Polyxmedia and we will add it. Last updated May 2026.

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