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I am building an animated model of the solar system, where I would like to display the OrbitPaths of the planets along with their Positions at any one point in time. I would like to display the orbital paths as lines, just as they are given when inputting AstronomicalData["Earth", "OrbitPath"].

I'd like to display the positions as Spheres though. For some reason, even though I am combining the two graphical elements, only the spheres are displaying, and I cannot see the orbit lines at all. Would anyone be able to pinpoint what I am doing wrong in my code?

Animate[
 Show[
  Graphics3D[
   AstronomicalData[#, "OrbitPath"] & /@ AstronomicalData["Planet"]], 
  Graphics3D[
   Sphere[AstronomicalData[#, {"Position", DateList[x][[;; 3]]}] & /@ 
     AstronomicalData["Planet"], 5*10^10]]
  ], {x, 1, 10000000000}, AnimationRate -> 100000000
 ]

For the record, I tried putting the graphics primitives in a single Graphics3D and combining the spheres and lines into a single list of primitives, but that was throwing up too many problems so I figured this way would be more straightforward.

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    $\begingroup$ If you study the output of AstronomicalData["Venus", "OrbitPath"] and compare it to the output of AstronomicalData["Venus", "Position"] you'll see that the former doesn't provide the actual path coordinates but some kind of scaled version with numbers differing orders of magnitude from the latter ones. $\endgroup$
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Apr 13, 2014 at 20:54
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you, @SjoerdC.deVries. I didn't realise that. Do you have a quick solution for how to scale them up to the position coordinate system? $\endgroup$
    – Aron
    Apr 13, 2014 at 20:59
  • $\begingroup$ It looks like the scaling is in astronomical units, so a multiplication by 149597870700 should do the trick. $\endgroup$
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Apr 13, 2014 at 21:00

1 Answer 1

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The orbit path is given in astronomical units whereas the position is given in meters, so you have to scale:

UnitConvert[Quantity[1, "AstronomicalUnit"], "m"]
(* Quantity[149597870700, "Meters"] *)

Animate[
 Graphics3D[
  {
   (AstronomicalData[#, "OrbitPath"] /.Line[a__] :> Line[149597870700 a]) & /@ 
          AstronomicalData["Planet"], 
   Sphere[AstronomicalData[#, {"Position", DateList[x][[;; 3]]}] & /@ 
     AstronomicalData["Planet"], 5*10^10]
   }
  ], {x, 1, 10000000000}, AnimationRate -> 100000000]

Mathematica graphics

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  • $\begingroup$ I keep getting $Aborted when running the code. V 9.01 on windows 7.!Mathematica graphics restarted kernel few times. did not make difference. May be it is internet issue reading the data from WRI server $\endgroup$
    – Nasser
    Apr 13, 2014 at 21:20
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @nasser Just start some AstronomicalData stuff on their own, like AstronomicalData["Venus", "OrbitPath"] to load the Paclet data and only then evaluate the Animation $\endgroup$
    – Sjoerd C. de Vries
    Apr 13, 2014 at 21:42
  • $\begingroup$ Perfect, @SjoerdC.deVries. This is precisely the answer I was looking for. Thank you. For me it also aborts a few times before running properly, but it looks like this might just be the sheer quantity of data it is calling up from AstronomicalData? $\endgroup$
    – Aron
    Apr 14, 2014 at 1:02

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