Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to StellarSnap – Explore NASA APODs, simulate orbits, learn astronomy
I built StellarSnap as a calm, ad-free space to explore NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) and learn astronomy along the way. What it includes: - A clean APOD archive browser with a Random APOD button - A growing Glossary with term highlighting across the site - A 2D Orbit Simulator where you can test satellite motion with real physics - A deeper Encyclopedia, still early, but expanding - Subtle touches like “see past APODs using this term” - And more to come It’s entirely ad-free, cookie-free, and not affiliated with NASA, but I was honored to have StellarSnap mentioned on the…
StellarSnap is an ad-free astronomy learning platform featuring a searchable archive of NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day, a 2D orbit simulator with real physics, and an expanding glossary and encyclopedia. It lets… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
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Atlas of Spacefree▲770Hello HN! Sharing a recent side project of mine, the Atlas of Space, that I built out to explore the Solar System. As a long-time space nerd, I realized recently that I didn't have a good intuition on the scale, speed, and relative orientation of the celestial bodies around us. So over the break I built out a kind of spatial Wikipedia to click around and learn about planets, moons, asteroids, and other bodies orbiting the Sun. The physics is all simulated in the browser using simple Newtonian mechanics. There's a lot left to do from here, including modeling objects in non-Keplerian orbits…
2025 · atlasof.space · its alternatives →
- 2AAAstro App▲291
I really like Stellarium and SkySafari but I felt like these are primarily geared towards exploring the sky but not so much "here are the long list of things I want to see, when can I see them tonight and where". There's also not really a great option I've found that combines sky object planning + location weather details while still being free so I built this. The UI's heavily inspired by NINAs sky atlas + Robinhood. Right now you can: View the altitude chart of objects and 3D view Create lists of objects of interest View the annual max/min daily altitude of an object to find the best…
2024 · astro.sshh.io · its alternatives →
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AstraPixelsfree tier, from $5/mo▲267A pixel-art solar system at its real current positions.
Aug 2026 · astrapixels.com · its alternatives →
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I didn't realize Universe Sandbox ran on MacOS, and I was in the mood to play around a bit. Some functions it's got: - Random system generation - Sonification is super fun too - Habitability Simulation (Just for fun, don't cite this please) - Replacing, spawning, deleting objects I've had tons of fun building this, so I hope someone else can share the joy. It's free and runs in the browser. I'd love to hear any feedback. I think this is at a state where I might leave it as it is, but if people are interested in other features, maybe I'll keep working on it. I've kept saying I'll stop working…
Dec 2025 · luna.watermelonson.com · its alternatives →
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Vibrantsnap▲358Your product is good. Your demo should say so.
2024 · vibrantsnap.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! We are the co-founders of Elodin (https://elodin.systems/), a code-first physics simulation framework. We just open-sourced our core libraries on Github: https://github.com/elodin-sys/elodin Have you ever wondered what happens when a satellite is first placed into orbit? It turns out that often, they tumble out of control, end over end, in a miraculous fight against stability. Check out our demo here of a control system attempting to rectify this: https://app.elodin.systems/sandbox/hn/cube-sat The spacecraft does not…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN! I made Orbit, an iOS app that allows you to see the satellites, planets, and constellations above you in AR, on a 2D map, and on a 3D globe. The app includes more than 15,000 objects tracked by CelesTrack, together with their pass predictions, descriptions, and detailed orbital data. A searchable catalog of all objects is also available, as well as a built-in chatbot designed to answer any space-related questions you might have. This is my first published iOS app, so any feedback is greatly appreciated! App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6772174570
Jul 2026 · nagylukas.github.io · its alternatives →
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Just for fun and self education, I've built this over a weekend to teach myself why orbits exist, not just show planets going around. Something that was never clearly explain to me in school. It opens with a guided tour that builds the idea up step by step: two bodies and the equal/opposite force, inertia (the Sun is removed and Earth just drifts straight), then "an orbit is falling and continuously missing," cosmic velocities with a little rocket, Voyager 1 & 2's real gravity assists (the clock runs the actual 1977–1989 dates so the planets orbit into their grand-tour alignment and the…
Jun 2026 · qunabu.github.io · its alternatives →
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Hello, I am the creator and maintainer of Stellarium Mobile. I have been working in my free time for about a year on this new project Galaxium, that is more about traveling in the universe rather than looking at the sky from Earth. It is still experimental, and at the moment I am not sure what it will become. Feedback is welcome.
Aug 2026 · galaxium.app · its alternatives →
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Live NASA solar imagery in 12 wavelengths, the moon phase tonight for 200+ cities, and real space weather. Free on iOS and Android. No ads, no signup.
Apr 2026 · lumara-space.app · its alternatives →
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AstroGrid▲113Explore the entire universe in your browser, in real 3D
Apr 2026 · velonspace.com · its alternatives →
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Spatium▲182Hi there, humans! I'm excited to announce Spatium! I'm a big fan of any topic related to our universe. I'm also a developer, so I've put these things together and I built this new tab Chrome Extension for space lovers, astronomy fans, and science geeks like me. If you enjoyed it, please spread some love <3 FEATURES • Space images • Every day, get a fascinating image of our universe. Enjoy pictures of stars, planets, moons, galaxies, nebulae, comets and more right on your browser tab. • Sun Widget • Find out when the sunrise, sunset, first and last light times will be precisely at your…
2021 · spatium.earth · its alternatives →
- 13AS
Create custom star maps, with the stars, planets, Sun and Moon as seen from the locations, dates and times of your choice, and your own design. Download them as transparent PNG to add to your own products, or create unique art with them.
2019 · thestarmaps.com · its alternatives →
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Better client for the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
2016 · its alternatives →
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Hi HN - My name is Andrew, and I'm a high school student. This is a write-up on StratoSpore, a payload I designed and launched to the stratosphere. The goal was to test if we could estimate physical altitude based on algae fluorescence (using a lightweight ML model trained on the sensor data). The blog post covers the full engineering mess/process, including: - The Hardware: Designing PCBs for the AS7263 spectral sensor and Pi Zero 2 W. -The biological altimeter: How I tried to correlate biological stress (fluorescence) with altitude. - The Communications: A custom lossy compression…
Nov 2025 · radi8.dev · its alternatives →
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AR Astronomy App, BlackHole Simulator, Astronomy News & More
2025 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →
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Hey everyone! I’m working on Telescope - an open-source web-based log viewer designed to make working with logs stored in ClickHouse easier and more intuitive. I wasn’t happy with existing log viewers - most of them force a specific log format, are tied to ingestion pipelines, or are just a small part of a larger platform. Others didn’t display logs the way I wanted. So I decided to build my own lightweight, flexible log viewer - one that actually fits my needs. Check it out: Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IItMOXwugY GitHub:…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
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PixelSpace▲68A tediously accurate scale model of the solar system
2014 · joshworth.com · its alternatives →
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This is a little hobby project that I hope you enjoy. You can see where the International Space Station is now, with live HD video from NASA, on a realistic 3D globe. The positions of the sun and moon are also accurate, though distances aren't to scale. The clouds are also near-realtime; I span that out into a separate project at https://clouds.matteason.co.uk, where the cloud images I create from EUMETSAT data are freely available. I've got more features almost ready to go, like the ability to turn off all UI, toggleable clouds and turning off the day/night cycle I'd love for…
2024 · iss.matteason.co.uk · its alternatives →
- 21IB
Mar 2026 · structuredlabs.github.io · its alternatives →
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Automatically downloads and sets the NASA picture of the day (APOD) as your desktop in Ubuntu. - randomdrake/nasa-apod-desktop
2012 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Build radial menus, charts and instruments with Orbit. Try the interactive playground, change the geometry and download working HTML.
2024 · zumerlab.github.io · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →