Open chrisarridge opened 9 months ago
Hi I am interested in working on this
You'd be very welcome @idrak888! In the coordinate system of the model the x axis points from the planet to the Sun (represented by oPlanetSunVector
in the Ikuchi
class in source/js/ikuchi.js
). If the planet was at rest (not moving around the Sun) and the solar wind went straight away from the Sun then the solar wind would point exactly in the $-x$ direction (-1,0,0)
. the following crude sketch shows the directions:
So we could add another vector like
this.oSolarWindVector = new THREE.ArrowHelper(new THREE.Vector3(-1.0,0.0,0.0), origin, 5.0, this.solarWindVectorColour)
But because the planet is moving around the Sun the solar wind appears like it's coming at an angle $\tan^{-1}(v{planet}/v{solarwind})$ from the Sun direction towards the planet's orbit. So it will be a case of calculating this angle, for the selected planet, and constructing the appropriate THREE.Vector3
.
We don't have the planet orbital speed in the source/js/planets.json
data file but this could be added using the data from the NASA Planetary Fact Sheets. Plus we'd need to store the solar wind speed somewhere (there could be in a GUI element for it) and we'd need to add a button to turn this vector on/off (probably in the "Options" part of the GUI).
Is that enough information to go on?
Alongside the direction to the Sun we should add another vector showing the aberrated direction of the solar wind which accounts for the speed of the solar wind and the speed of the planet's orbital motion.