Clockwork Orrery: Gear-Driven Planetary Motion (2D)

This 2D companion reproduces the same period relationships as the 3D orrery — Mercury's real 0.24-year orbit compressed to a 4-second sweep, with every other planet's angular speed scaled from that same reference — but drawn as a plain top-down canvas view built for reading the mechanism rather than orbiting a scene. A ring-and-pinion gear train sits at the centre: each planet's own small gear is sized and geared to turn at a rate matching its real orbital speed, the same trick an 18th-century clockwork orrery used to reproduce every planet's true relative period from a single hand-cranked driving gear, without timing each arm separately. Click any planet, or use the name buttons, to highlight it and read off its real orbital period alongside the running simulated-year counter.