Vol. I · 00:00:00 UTC

World in Motion

Earth, sky & time, in eight working instruments, seven more in preparation

Every plate on this page is drawn live

☉ — ☾ — Voyager 1 —

I History

  1. Nº 1 Empires Globe Who ruled where, 3400 BCE to today, on an old-atlas globe.

II The Earth

  1. Nº 2 Earth Time Machine Every day of NASA satellite imagery since 2000.
  2. Nº 3 Live Weather Globe Today’s weather, clouds and earthquakes on one Earth.
  3. Nº 4 Air Time Machine Nitrogen dioxide from orbit, every day since 2004.
  4. Soon Daylight Atlas Day length everywhere through the year, and the Sun's figure-eight. In preparation

III The Sky & Beyond

  1. Nº 5 Night Sky Live The real sky above you, this minute.
  2. Nº 6 Born From Space The Earth and the sky on the day you were born.
  3. Soon The Sun Today Today's Sun from orbit, its spots, and where the aurora may be tonight. In preparation
  4. Soon Orrery The planets where they are right now, and how far light takes to reach the probes. In preparation
  5. Soon Is Anyone There? Stars with known planets, and how far Earth's first radio has travelled. In preparation
  6. Soon Message from Earth The Voyager Golden Record cover, decoded one diagram at a time. In preparation

IV Flow

  1. Soon Wind Tunnel Draw a shape and watch air flow past it, solved live in your browser. In preparation
  2. Soon Reynolds Number of Everything From bacteria to hurricanes: why every flow looks the way it does. In preparation

Tools

  1. Tool Weather Dash Any city’s weather, seven days ahead.
  2. Tool Pomodoro Timer Twenty-five minutes of focus, then a break.

The ledger

What each instrument draws on, on what terms, and what leaves your browser. No cookies, analytics, tracking or accounts of our own, anywhere. Cloudflare, which hosts the site, may set a strictly necessary security cookie.

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InstrumentMeasured byTermsLeaves your browser
Empires GlobeCliopatria borders, Seshat Global History DatabankCC BY 4.0 · Natural Earth, public domainNothing. Your time zone is read in the browser only, to pick the guide’s sample story; Wikipedia only if you tap a link
Night Sky LiveXHIP stars (Anderson & Francis 2012) · ESO Milky Way · CelesTrak orbits · d3-celestial figuresCC BY 4.0 (ESO, Open-Meteo) · BSD 3-Clause (d3-celestial) · MIT and OFL (bundled code and fonts)Orbits of the ISS, Tiangong and Hubble from CelesTrak (twice a day at most); place searches to Open-Meteo
Earth Time MachineNASA GIBS: MODIS, VIIRS, FIRMSNASA, no US copyrightMap tiles requested from NASA GIBS
Live Weather GlobeOpen-Meteo · U.S. Geological Survey · NASA GIBS · TheSportsDB · wheretheiss.at · CelesTrak (fallback)CC BY 4.0 (Open-Meteo) · public domain (U.S. Geological Survey, NASA) · TheSportsDB terms · BigDataCloud terms · MIT and OFL (bundled code and fonts)Weather, quake, match and space-station requests, paused while the tab is hidden; your position, only if you press “Where am I”, to Open-Meteo and BigDataCloud
Air Time MachineNASA Aura OMI via GIBSNASA, no US copyrightMap tiles requested from NASA GIBS
Born From SpaceNASA GIBS · Open-Meteo ERA5 · d3-celestialNASA · CC BY 4.0 · BSDThe date and the city’s map area, to NASA and Open-Meteo. Never stored
Weather DashOpen-Meteo · GeoNames place namesCC BY 4.0 (Open-Meteo, GeoNames)The city you search for, to Open-Meteo
Pomodoro TimerNone—Nothing

Disclaimer

Everything here is free, for general interest and education only, and provided as is, without warranty of any kind. The site was built with the help of AI tools, so its code, texts and data may contain mistakes: please check anything important against reliable sources and do your own research. Maps, borders, dates, sky positions, weather, air and earthquake data may be approximate, delayed or wrong, so never rely on them for navigation, safety, health, emergencies or other important decisions; use official sources. Historical borders and names are reconstructions and express no view on the status of any territory or people. Data and links from other providers belong to them and are shown under their terms. To the fullest extent the law allows, no liability is accepted for any loss or damage from using the site. Full terms ⟶