The aim of this work is to provide a realistic, animated representation of the solar system and its main objects.

The work will be carried out using the JMonkey engine and the Java language.

Solar Systems objects

The project must include at least the following items:

• Sun (star)
• Mercury (planet)
• Venus (planet)
• Earth (planet)
  
  • Moon (moon)
• Mars (planet)
  
  • Phobos (moon)
  • Deimos (moon)
• Jupiter (planet)
  
  • Io (moon)
  • Europe (moon)
• Saturn (planet)
  
  • Rings of Saturn (ring system)
• Uranus (planet)
• Neptune (planet)
• The Kuiper Belt (asteroids belt)

Implementation

The project should offer a realistic vision of specified solar system objects (appearance, behavior). In particular, it is required:

• The use realistic shapes and textures for the objects
• To consider the sun as the only source of light
• To represent the planets' movements using Newton's theorem of revolving orbits

Two adaptations will be accepted:

• Scale certain distances or sizes to facilitate the display of objects
• Simplify of the application of gravitational laws, considering only star/planet and planet/moon systems (no consideration of gravitational perturbations between moons, for example, or between different planets).

Features

The following features are required:

• User interface to change viewpoint for visualization
• Change the direction of time flow (to the future, to the past)
• Accelerate / slow down / pause the flow of time
• Display or not object orbits as lines
• Select a planet/moon to display its name, size and weight

Tips

Information about planets can be retrieved from Solar System Open Data. 

Models for the solar system objects are available on NASA website.

An example of a 3D solar system viewer is available from Nasa (https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/#/home).