Questions and Answers
How does See A Satellite Tonight calculate the time and place at which a satellite will be visible?
Orbit propagation
What does the site use to show the satellite view?
Google Maps API
What is the purpose of the survey on the site?
To improve the site's brightness mode
How is the website hosted?
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What type of website is See A Satellite Tonight?
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Study Notes
- See A Satellite Tonight calculates the time and place at which a satellite will be visible to the user.
- The site uses geolocation and satellite data to calculate this information.
- The site also uses orbit propagation to calculate the position of the satellites at a given time.
- The site uses C++ code to perform these calculations.
- The calculations are performed on the server side.
- The site is client-heavy, relying on user input for most of its features.
- The site provides an interactive 3D globe visualization of the sky with satellite visibility information for the next 5 days.
- The site uses a free Google Maps API to show the satellite view.
- The site also has a Street View integration that shows the satellite's current location.
- The site is designed to be appealing to people who have no idea about space or satellites.
- The site uses filters to make the Street View images look like they were taken at night, with a dark sky.
- The site is designed to be faster than real time, by showing animations instead of live data
- The site includes a button to schedule a reminder for a future satellite pass, as well as a subtle "shine" animation to make it more noticeable
- Calendar events are used to remind the user about upcoming satellite passes, and the site switches to a real-time mode when a satellite is currently overhead
- The site also includes a survey to verify that users are able to see the passes that are predicted
- The data from the survey is used to improve the site's brightness mode.
- The website allows you to view satellite imagery of the Earth and track the positions of satellites.
- The website is hosted on Google App Engine and uses Cloudflare's free CDN.
- The website is almost completely static, with only a few dynamic endpoints.
- The website can scale to infinity and costs practically nothing to maintain.
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