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Solar System Map – data sources and how we calculate

SolarSystemMap shows where the planets, dwarf planets, selected comets and asteroids and space probes are today – and how far they are from Earth and from the Sun. The time slider goes a hundred years back and forward. The site is part of the Ominuvo map series.

In the database: 8 planets, 5 dwarf planets, 40 moons, 14 comets, 25 asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects and 35 missions (trajectories of 31 spacecraft).

Data sources

• Planets, the Moon and Pluto – NASA Planetary Fact Sheet (NSSDCA, NASA Goddard): mass, diameter, density, gravity, day length, distances, temperature, number of moons.
• Planetary moons – JPL Solar System Dynamics: Planetary Satellite Physical Parameters and Mean Elements: radius, mass (GM), density, mean distance from the planet, orbital period. The moons of the dwarf planets Eris, Haumea and Makemake are not in these tables – for them we only give a description (MK 2, Makemake’s moon, after NASA’s discovery release; its orbit is still uncertain).
• Dwarf planets, comets and asteroids – JPL Small-Body Database (SBDB API): sizes, rotation periods, albedo, discovery; orbital elements for the import date – JPL Horizons.
• Spacecraft trajectories – JPL Horizons: heliocentric position vectors at a fixed step (from 1 to several dozen days depending on the length of the mission), ecliptic J2000 frame.
• Mission dates, milestones and landing sites – mission pages of NASA, ESA, JAXA, CNSA and ISRO, the NASA NSSDCA catalogue and mission team publications (sources listed with each mission).
• Surface maps – Solar System Scope textures (CC BY 4.0, based on NASA data), feature names from the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature (IAU/USGS).
• Launch sites and orbital launches (launch sites, launch history) – GCAT – General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects by Jonathan C. McDowell (CC BY 4.0): every orbital launch attempt since 1957 with date, rocket, site and outcome. Coordinates of land sites and links to Wikipedia – Wikidata (CC0); names, operators and descriptions of the main sites are written for this site. Data as of 2 November 2026.

Last import: factsheet 2026-11-02 · horizons 2026-11-02 · sats 2026-10-31 · sbdb 2026-11-02.

How positions and distances are calculated

Distances are calculated from NASA/JPL orbital elements – accuracy depends on the object and the date:

• Planets – JPL “Keplerian Elements for Approximate Positions of the Major Planets” (E. M. Standish). The table is valid for 1800–2050: in that range the Earth–planet distance error is usually a fraction of a per mille (for Mars, some ten thousand kilometres out of hundreds of millions). Outside it accuracy drops – the ±100-year slider shows distant dates for illustration.
• Dwarf planets – Pluto from the same JPL table, the others from approximate elements (illustrative positions).
• The Moon – J. Meeus’ abridged lunar theory (“Astronomical Algorithms”, ch. 47): distance accurate to a few hundred kilometres.
• Comets and asteroids – Keplerian motion from osculating elements at an epoch – the import date (JPL Horizons, including planetary perturbations up to that date). For today it matches JPL ephemerides; the further the slider moves from the import date, the larger the error (close encounters with planets are not modelled).
• Spacecraft – simplified trajectories: JPL Horizons samples every 1–60 days (depending on the length of the mission) with linear interpolation in between, so fast planetary flybys are smoothed out. Probes leaving the Solar System are moved along a straight line after the end of the data. Landers and rovers sit at their body from the landing date. The Webb telescope uses a trajectory relative to Earth.
• Events calendar – oppositions, conjunctions and elongations from the same orbital elements (equal or opposite ecliptic longitudes of Earth and the planet), close approaches and perihelia from distances sampled every 1–2 days and refined to the hour. We checked several dates against JPL Horizons ephemerides: they agree to within 1–2 hours. The 2029 Apophis flyby is not computed (Earth bends its path) – we quote NASA/JPL CNEOS data.
• The map is a top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit; distances in tables and panels are 3D (including the offset from that plane). The “readable” scale compresses distances so that both Mercury and Pluto are visible; the “true” scale keeps proportions out to Neptune’s orbit.

This is an educational site – for planning observations or spacecraft communications, use JPL Horizons ephemerides.

Updates

Positions and distances are calculated live (every second in the browser, at the start of the UTC day on the server). NASA/JPL data and spacecraft trajectories are imported regularly – trajectories of active missions change after manoeuvres.

Licences

• NASA and JPL data – U.S. Government works, public domain.
• Solar System Scope textures – CC BY 4.0 (credited under the surface maps).
• Launch data – “data from GCAT (J. McDowell, planet4589.org/space/gcat)”, CC BY 4.0; the credit is shown on the launch pages, in the images and in the datasets.
• Fonts: Barlow Condensed, IBM Plex Sans, JetBrains Mono and Noto Sans – SIL Open Font License 1.1.
• Descriptions of planets, moons, comets and missions – written for this site from publicly available sources.

Privacy

The site does not use cookies. Visits may be counted by Matomo in cookieless mode – no profiling and no data shared with advertisers. Maps and all scripts are served from the same domain.

Your browser stores something in one case only: if you choose the light theme (switch in the header), it remembers that choice in local storage (localStorage, key theme). It stays on your device and is never sent to us; switching back to the dark theme removes it. The map state (date, scale, selected body) lives only in the page address (after the # sign) and is not stored anywhere.

Contact form

• Contact form. When you write to us (contact form), we process your name or nickname, e-mail address and message, as well as the site name and the page the message was sent from. The message is e-mailed to contact@ominuvo.com.
• Purpose and legal basis: replying to your message – based on the consent you give in the form (Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR); protecting the form against spam and abuse – based on the controller’s legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). Providing the data is voluntary, but without it we cannot reply.
• Spam protection: the sender’s IP address is stored only as a hash (the address cannot be recovered from it) for the message limit and deleted after an hour. The form does not use cookies.
• Recipients and retention: the data is stored by our hosting and e-mail provider, which processes it only on our behalf; we do not sell or share it. We keep correspondence as long as needed to reply and then no longer than 12 months, unless the law or the defence of claims requires longer.
• Withdrawing consent: at any time, by writing to contact@ominuvo.com. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of processing before it. You also have the right to access, rectify, erase, restrict and port your data, to object and to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority (in Poland: the President of UODO).

Chat (“Message us”)

• Data: When you write in the chat, we store the text of your messages, the topic you chose, the address and title of the page you write from, the previous page (referrer), your language, the type of device and browser and – if you provide them – your name and email address. Simply viewing a page stores nothing: a conversation starts with your first message.
• Purpose and legal basis: replying to your message and handling your report (an error, an idea, a partnership) – the controller’s legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR); you give your email address voluntarily so that we can reply when nobody is available right away (consent – Art. 6(1)(a) GDPR, which you can withdraw at any time).
• No cookies: the chat does not use cookies. So that the conversation does not disappear when you move to another page, your browser keeps a random conversation identifier in local storage (localStorage, a key starting with “ochat:”); clearing the site data removes it. We store IP addresses only as a hash, for the message limit (spam protection).
• How long: the conversation and the data you provided are deleted automatically 14 days after the last message – earlier on request (write in the chat or to contact@ominuvo.com).
• Who has access: the chat window is loaded from the Ominuvo messaging server (assets.ominuvo.com), and messages are read in the panel only by the people replying on behalf of the site. The data is stored by our hosting provider on our behalf; notifications about a new message pass, encrypted, through the push service of the replying person’s browser. We do not sell the data or use it for advertising.