The solar system in 3D The bodies and spacecraft where they are, and what links them

Heliocentric ecliptic J2000 coordinates. The planets are placed by the approximate Keplerian elements of JPL (Standish), with their orbits; checked against JPL Horizons on 26 October 2026, the difference is 0.001° (Venus) to 0.07° (Saturn). The Moon follows Meeus (ch. 47), brought from the equinox of date to J2000. Comets are placed by their elements (Kepler’s, Barker’s or the hyperbolic equation). Spacecraft follow the trajectories delivered to JPL Horizons by their navigation teams, over the last 60 days. Bodies are spheres at true size, oriented by the IAU rotation models (Archinal et al. 2018) and lit by the Sun; a marker of fixed size on screen finds them at any scale. Next oppositions, conjunctions and elongations: extrema of the elongation computed day by day over 900 days. Eclipses: Meeus (ch. 54).

What links the bodies. The magnetic field line through the Earth or Mars follows the Parker spiral for the solar wind speed measured at the L1 point. Its footpoint on the Sun shows where the energetic particles reaching the planet come from. As the Sun turns in 25.4 days, a fast wind stream sweeps the Earth and then Mars a few days later: the delay is the longitude difference between their footpoints divided by the relative rotation rate. The coronal mass ejections of the last seven days (CACTus, SOHO/LASCO) are drawn as cones, the front at constant speed. Their direction is only known projected on the sky seen from the Earth: the axis is put in that plane, and a halo is assumed Earth-directed. A planet inside the cone gets a possible arrival date. Spring and neap tides follow the alignment of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon.