Binary Orbit 3D Visualizer 🌌

Check it out live: https://ryan-tock.github.io/binary-orbits/

Welcome to the Binary Orbit 3D Visualizer! This graph is for plotting existing (or new) binary star data in a way that can be easily visualized.

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🌟 What Can It Do? (Key Features)

• See Orbits in 3D: Get a sense of a binary system in three-dimensional space.
• Fit Your Data: Crunch observational data and find out the best-fit orbit, displaying the key parameters.
• Interactivity:
  • Sample Orbits: The data for 4 actual orbital systems are included with this site.
  • Upload Data: This tool supports uploading your own binary star data.
  • Change Faulty Data:
    • Remove Point: You can remove outliers from the visualizations and calculations
    • Highlight Point: Make a specific data point stand out by coloring it black.
    • Flip Coordinates: Historical data often contains points with some coordinates flipped, so flip them back!
• Get the Results: Once optimized, you'll see the orbital parameters that describe the orbit.

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• Set Period Bounds: You must give the tool a range containing the true period for it to function.

🚀 Using The Tool

1. Getting Data on the Screen

• Using The Sample Data:

  • Ensure the "Use sample data" checkbox is tucked.
  • Pick an example orbit from the dropdown list.

• Using Your Own Data:

  • To see the correct data format, load some sample data and then click the "Download updated data file" button. That'll give you a template.
  • Once your file is ready, use the file browser (it will appear when you uncheck "Use sample data") to load your data.

Important Note: At this stage, you'll only see the raw data points plotted in the 3D space. The orbit hasn't been fitted yet!

2. Fitting Data

• Ensure Period Bounds are Set Correctly
  • The default period bounds are 2-40 years. Many binary systems are well outside of this range, so ensure you have the bounds set to an appropriate timeframe.
  • The units are always years, so make sure units are converted before putting them in.
• Hit "Optimzie Orbit!"

3. Tweaking Data

• Choose Appropriate Setting
  • Do Nothing
  • Remove Point Removes points.
  • Highlight point Makes points black to distinguish them.
  • Negate RA Negates the RA coordinate of the point.
  • Negate Dec Negates the Dec coordinate of the point.
  • Negate RA and Dec Negates the RA and Dec coordinates of the point.
• Click any point on the graph.
  • When all data is adjusted. It is highly recommended that you re-fit the data using the "Optimize Orbit!" button.

4. Download Updated Data and Read Parameters

• Download Updated Data
  • Click the "Download updated data file" button.
• Read Parameters
  • Read all 7 orbital parametrs at the bottom section of the page.

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Forking this Repository

If you'd like to use Desmos in your own project, or in a fork of this project, please reach out to partnerships@desmos.com to request your own API key. If you clone this repository and host it yourself you will immediately get an error. To fix this, create a file called config.js and provide the API key and the AWS endpoint. An example config.js is provided below with the Desmos demonstration API key (only to be used during development) and my AWS endpoint (which will only work on localhost and my site)

export const DESMOS_API_KEY = "dcb31709b452b1cf9dc26972add0fda6";
export const API_ENDPOINT_URL = "https://ko2hf5sz9g.execute-api.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/process";