INITIALISING VOLUME

ASTRA FIELD MANUAL

TWO MODES · ONE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE
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ORBIT & FLIGHT CONTROLS · AVAILABLE IN BOTH MODES

DRAGOrbit the camera around whatever is currently focused — or, at the controls, steer the vehicle.
WHEELExponential zoom across 30 orders of magnitude — from one metre above a surface out to the 46.5 Gly particle horizon, with no loading and no popping. In free flight the wheel sets your cruise speed instead.
FREE VIEW VUnbind the camera and fly it like a ship: W/S forward and back, A/D strafe, Q/E descend and climb, SHIFT boost, CTRL fine control. Drag to look. You spawn here, skimming the photosphere of Sol.
VEHICLES BLaunch a rocket, starship, interceptor, ion probe or lander and take the controls. Real Newtonian flight: every body in the universe pulls on you, so orbits, landings and gravity assists are genuine. W/S throttle, arrows or drag to steer, A/D roll, Q/E vertical thrusters, X inertial dampeners, C camera (cockpit / chase / cinematic), B or ESC eject.
RIDE A BODYSelect any world, moon or star and press RIDE TARGET: the camera travels with it, at any speed, while you look around freely.
CLICK A STARInterstellar transit. The system materialises in real orbital geometry and the camera flies to it.
CLICK A BODYTarget lock — the telemetry matrix and the tool panel follow your selection. Vehicles can be targeted too.
TIME BARSeconds per simulated second. Slide it negative to run time backwards, or freeze outright. Vehicles always fly in real time.
KEYSSPACE freeze · R real time · F centre on target · M menu · H this manual · ESC clear selection / eject
NAV BEACONS2 033 warp targets: every named star plus every star with confirmed planets.

GRAVITY SIMULATOR · AVAILABLE IN BOTH MODES

DYNAMIC GRAVITYTakes the focused system off its Keplerian rails and integrates real N-body gravity: every mass pulls on every other mass. Orbits go unstable, get captured, get torn apart. Leapfrog integration at 1/24 of the fastest orbit. Pair it with COLLISION PHYSICS.
COLLISION LABImpacts report their energy in tonnes of TNT and their closing speed. Ejecta becomes real bodies on ballistic paths: inside the Roche limit they spread into a ring system, outside it they are captured as moons, and everything that falls back accretes.
HABITABLE ZONEThe green band around every star, from its measured luminosity (Kopparapu limits). The CLIMATE MODEL row recomputes equilibrium temperature from real stellar flux, albedo and greenhouse at every step.
LAGRANGE POINTSL1–L5 for the world you are focused on, with the triangular points at ±60°.
ORBIT PREDICTIONDraws 1.6 orbits of the selected body's future path.
SNAPSHOT / RESTORERecords the whole universe — masses, radii, orbital phase, velocities — and puts it back. Undo a catastrophe.
MINOR BODIESRenders the asteroid and outer icy belts for the system under observation.
SIMULATION LIBRARYTwelve staged experiments: giant impact, comet bombardment, binary stars, the three-body problem, a black hole encounter, colliding galaxies, the Roche limit, the habitable zone, Planet Nine, an impact laboratory, a supernova and a 100-million-year stability run.
SEARCHThe box in the top bar finds any of the 7 254 stars, 2 268 confirmed worlds, 829 galaxies or 24 structures and travels straight to it. Arrows to browse, ENTER to go.
TRANSITS & ECLIPSESWhen a world crosses the disc of its star, or a moon enters a planet's shadow, the event is logged as you observe it.
PHOTO MODE PHides every instrument for a clean capture.

MODE 01 · EXPLORE

A survey, not an editor. The universe as it has actually been measured, and nothing you can do here will change a single number. Every position, distance, spectrum and orbit comes from a published catalogue, the telemetry matrix names the source for every value it reports — and every editor in the interface is switched off for this mode.

7 254 STARSTrue ICRS positions, spectral classes, magnitudes and luminosities. Colour and brightness are derived from each star's own physics.
2 268 WORLDSConfirmed exoplanets with their real periods, semi-major axes, masses, radii, eccentricities — plus discovery year and method.
OUR SOLAR SYSTEMClick Sol: 8 planets, 5 dwarf planets and 17 moons at IAU nominal values, with Saturn's rings at their measured radii.
829 GALAXIESAt measured distances, diameters and morphologies, plus 30 real clusters and 24 real walls, superclusters and voids.
HONESTYA star with no confirmed planets is badged SURVEY MODEL in both its label and its telemetry. Measured data is never dressed up as fiction.
YOUR INSTRUMENTSSix vision modes — normal, thermal, X-ray, gamma, deep field and night eye — plus the habitable-zone band, Lagrange point markers, a drawn future path for any selected world, and the asteroid and icy belts. All observation, no edit.
HOW YOU TRAVELClick a star to transit across light-years, fly the camera free with V, or launch one of five vehicles with B and fly it under real gravity. Orbital elements are shown as measurements, but the sliders that would re-cut them do not exist in this mode.
IF YOU WANT TO EDITPress M and choose SANDBOX. Every one of these instruments stays, and the physics becomes writable.
SUGGESTED ROUTESol → TRAPPIST-1 → Vega → Betelgeuse → the Andromeda Galaxy → the Sloan Great Wall.

MODE 02 · SANDBOX

Same universe, but the laws are yours. Six extra tool groups appear in the right-hand panel, and the constraints that normally hold — stellar mass, atmospheric pressure, the value of G itself, solid matter — become sliders.

PHYSICSRewrite the gravitational constant from 0.025× to 25× G₀ and watch every orbit re-solve. Push time to 1 Gyr/s, past the instrument's rated limit. Invert every orbit, switch on physical collisions, orbital trails, cinematic camera.
STELLARSet stellar mass from 0.08 to 60 M☉ live — luminosity, temperature and all orbits re-derive. Evolve a red giant, forge a binary companion, collapse the star into a black hole, or detonate a supernova that vaporises or scorches its planets and leaves a 33 ms pulsar.
WORLDMass, radius, albedo and atmospheric pressure on live sliders. Terraform a world to a 288 K ocean planet, scorch it molten, freeze it, flood it, strip its air, forge rings, add moons.
CREATEForge ten body classes — terrestrial, gas giant, volcanic, ice, rock, star, black hole, neutron star, white dwarf, comet — plus 340-star clusters, nebulae, entire galaxies, and duplicates of anything.
CHAOSHoming impactors that accrete real mass on contact, full system annihilation, and BIG CRUNCH, which dissolves every planetary system at once.
VISIONThermal, X-ray, gamma, deep-field and night-eye sensors recolour the entire view.
PHASEThe camera is no longer bound by solid matter — it will descend straight through a planet and keep going.

KEYBOARD

SPACE freeze / resume
R real time
F centre on target
M main menu
H field manual
ESC clear / eject
WHEEL 30-decade zoom
CLICK target / transit
V free view
B launch / pilot / eject
C camera mode
X dampeners
W S throttle or fly
A D strafe / roll
Q E descend / climb
↑ ↓ ← → steer
SHIFT boost

DATA PROVENANCE

STARS HYG Stellar Database v4.0 — Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star Catalogue 5th ed., Gliese 3rd ed.
PLANETS NASA Exoplanet Archive, pscomppars table — all confirmed planets with an orbital solution
GALAXIES HEASARC neargalcat — Updated Nearby Galaxy Catalog (Karachentsev et al. 2013, AJ 145, 101)
STRUCTURE SDSS, CfA2, Shapley and Hercules–Corona Borealis survey values for clusters, superclusters, walls and voids
SOLAR SYSTEM IAU / IAU-IAG nominal values · RENDERING every pixel is procedural GLSL — no image assets
ASTRAINFINITE UNIVERSE SANDBOX // v1.0
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1.00e0 ×
60 fps
HDR
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TIME-DILATION FIELD // SECONDS PER SECOND
×1.00
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1 h/s
1 yr/s
1 kyr/s
DRAG · ORBIT CAMERA  |  WHEEL · EXPONENTIAL ZOOM (30 ORDERS)  |  V · FREE FLIGHT  |  B · PILOT A VEHICLE
CLICK STAR · WARP TO SYSTEM  |  CLICK BODY · TARGET  |  W S A D Q E · FLY
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PHOTO MODE · PRESS P TO RETURN
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