Show HN: Orbit – AR satellite tracker, watch 15k+ objects

61 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by lukas9
(nagylukas.github.io)

15 Comments

lumrn

3 hours ago

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!

lukas9

2 hours ago

Hey, thanks for trying it out and noting the bug, I'll look into it! As for the CelesTrack terms and usage, I also couldn't find much info on their website, but I only need one request every two hours so usage limits have never been an issue. For the license, I would assume that the SpaceTrack one would apply since CelesTrack doesn't list one.

bagels

5 hours ago

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).

https://celestrak.org/NORAD/elements/

LastTrain

2 hours ago

Cool. It would be a neat feature if it had a mirror mode, showed you what your screen is pointing at instead of the front of your phone.

Aachen

5 hours ago

How does it differ from the existing apps that do this?

lukas9

4 hours ago

The reason why I even made this app is that all the similar apps I tried didn't have enough data about the satellites, or just didn't present them in a clean and interesting way. So what I tried to do with my app is to give users multiple options of displaying the satellite positions (AR, 2D, 3D) and have as much data as I could gather for each satellite.

adrienfr31

7 hours ago

How do you calculate the next passes over a given position?

root-parent

6 hours ago

They dont ...Vibe coded...

kordlessagain

5 hours ago

Human slop comment.

If the app does what it advertises, there is ZERO reason to care about how it was created. We aren't talking about a one shot prompt here. I'm sure they spent a lot of time working on it, regardless of how the code got generated.

I figure most people that comment this way actually have difficulty getting a coding agent actually on track and building something useful. Just because you lack that skill, doesn't mean others don't have it.

Regardless, a low effort comment by a human is worth a lot less than a comment from an AI with some thought behind it from a human.

I build from a lot of reference code I wrote myself. I've been coding for 40 (oh shit - I'm old and can't do math) years, so I have a LOT of code. The improvements to this code by the agents is staggering. That's my experience. Doesn't have to be yours.

lukas9

4 hours ago

The other guy is not wrong... kinda. I used AI for the code because I have no experience with Swift and SwiftUI, but I do understand how the calculations work, because I designed them. CelesTrack gives me TLE data, precisely describing each satellite's orbit and movement, as well as its current position on the orbit. What my app does is simply simulate the satellite's position (in 30-second intervals) up until 2 or 7 days into the future, and checks whether the satellite is overhead on each interval. Satellites are considered overhead based on just one criterion, and that is that they are above your horizon (so an elevation > 0 degrees). Hope that answers your question.

mattlondon

4 hours ago

Appears to be iPhone only? Title needs updating

nefarious_ends

4 hours ago

The App Store says this app is 4+ years old. Sad that I can’t try the 3D view without paying but I think it’s interesting the Pro plan includes “20x the AI chat”. Oh my iPhone is VERY hot now, I better uninstall this app… good luck!

lukas9

4 hours ago

Did you possibly misread the App Store page? The app's age rating is 4+, not its age. I published it on the App Store less than a month ago. Also, is there a specific functionality you were using when your device started overheating, and have you tried changing the performance settings in the app?

oivaksef

6 hours ago

where do you get satellite orbits from?

lukas9

4 hours ago

All the data comes from CelesTrack