Physics / Astronomy / Earth
Blackbody radiation
Planck's curve live: slide the temperature, watch Wien's peak march and the Stefan-Boltzmann area grow, and see the body's true color.
Available for Windows
Makarov Astronomy Suite
120 interactive modules in six rings connect planets, stars, galaxies and cosmology with observation and spaceflight. Follow an orbit, inspect a star’s changing behaviour, explore a black hole or take control of a machine working beyond Earth.
120 modules · Page 3 / 6
Astronomy
Hertzsprung–Russell diagram
Explore temperature, luminosity and radius, compare two 3D stars, and inspect an offline HYG colour–magnitude sample.
Astronomy
Stellar evolution tracks
A star and its Hertzsprung-Russell diagram on the same clock. The colour comes from the track temperature through the Planck curve, the size from the radius that follows from L and T - nothing is hand-coloured.
Astronomy
Spectral lines and classification
Split starlight in a 3D spectrograph, resolve the sodium doublet, measure absorption and match a recorded noisy spectrum.
Physics / Astronomy
Telescope optics
Explore a telescope in 3D, diffraction rings and a surface of light intensity. Compare aperture, wave defocus and atmosphere on one angular scale.
Astronomy
Stellar parallax
Two dates, one moving image, and a distance measured from completed exposures. Compare frames and separate parallax from proper motion.
Astronomy
Cepheid period-luminosity
A pulsating photosphere, measured nights and the cosmic distance ladder. Recover a period from a phase fold, distinguish mean flux from mean magnitude, and see how dust biases distance.
Physics / Astronomy
Speed of light from Io
Roemer 1676: Io's eclipses arrive late when Earth is far from Jupiter, and the residuals of the fit measure the speed of light.
Astronomy
The Sun’s boiling surface
Explore a magnified patch of the photosphere. Follow warm upflows and cool lanes, and compare overturn time with the radiated energy flux.
Astronomy
Arches of solar plasma
Strengthen a magnetic field and heat the plasma. Follow bright tracers along closed coronal loops and compare magnetic with gas pressure.
Astronomy
Listening to the Sun
Choose a spherical oscillation mode. Watch the nodes stay still while opposite regions move in opposite directions.
Astronomy
When a cloud begins to collapse
Cool or compress a molecular cloud. Compare its mass with the Jeans mass and follow the pressureless collapse clock when gravity wins.
Astronomy
The expanding remains of a star
Expand a shock through interstellar gas. Increase the explosion energy or ambient density and compare the shock radius and speed.
Astronomy
A dying star’s luminous shell
Shape an expanding stellar envelope from a round shell into bipolar lobes. Track its expansion age and the fading emission measure.
Astronomy
A star the size of a planet
Add mass to a cold white dwarf and watch its radius shrink. Compare its density and surface redshift with the familiar scale of Earth.
Astronomy
A city-sized star
Compress a stellar mass into a small radius. Compare compactness, surface redshift and the increasing fraction of the surface visible through light bending.
Astronomy
A star spills into its companion
Expand the donor toward its Roche lobe. Watch the transfer stream switch on when the stellar surface reaches the critical radius.
Astronomy
A telescope as wide as its baseline
Separate two telescopes and resolve a double source through changing fringe visibility. Compare angular resolution with the fringe contrast.
Astronomy
Straightening starlight
Increase atmospheric wavefront error, then apply a correcting mirror. Compare the residual wavefront and the estimated peak intensity relative to the ideal image.
Astronomy
Building an image one photon at a time
Lengthen an exposure and collect photons from a faint spiral galaxy. Compare signal, sky background and read noise in the signal-to-noise budget.
Some modules belong to more than one Suite. Shared experiments have one description here.