Orbit - Real-time AR satellite tracker for 15k+ objects
Show HN: Orbit – AR satellite tracker, watch 15k+ objects
Orbit transforms your iPhone and iPad into a powerful real-time satellite tracker using augmented reality. Simply point your camera at the sky to instantly visualize the ISS, thousands of spacecraft, planets, constellations, and orbital debris passing overhead. Designed for iOS 17+, this app offers a comprehensive sky view without requiring an account, ensuring a seamless and private experience. With an optional AI chatbot powered by Google's Gemini API, users can also explore space-related questions directly within the app, making the cosmos accessible and interactive for everyone.
Orbit turns your iPhone and iPad into a real-time satellite tracker, allowing you to watch satellites, planets, constellations, and orbital debris appear through augmented reality.
- bagels
Awesome. This is a side project I never got around to making myself. For all the questions of "How do you know where the satellites are", there are published TLEs (old punchcard format) that describe orbital parameters, and you can use those to estimate the position within ~10km (good enough for this).
- lumrn
Very nice project! I have played around with it for a while and noticed that the top right satellite/debris selector doesn't seem to be working correctly as the "Satellites Only" and the "Debris Only" options don't seem to change anything on the ground track view.
I'm wondering if you have any information on Celestrak data licenses and usage terms? Their data comes from Space-Track (plus some directly from operators) which isn't very permissive with its usage and I never found anything more specific on Celestrak's website.
Reminds me of a space version of Flighty, best of luck with it!
- adrienfr31
How do you calculate the next passes over a given position?