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🪐 Exoplanet Transit Simulation (2D)

A flat, geometric transit-method lab: watch the exact overlap area of a star disc and a planet disc drive a live light curve as the planet sweeps across on a fixed sky-plane chord.

Space & Astronomy2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version

This 2D companion strips the transit method down to the geometry that actually produces the signal astronomers search for: a star disc and a planet disc, projected onto the sky plane, and the exact overlapping area between them each instant. Four sliders — orbital period, planet-to-star radius ratio (Rp/R★), orbit distance in stellar radii (a/R★) and the impact parameter (b, how far off-center the planet's chord passes) — feed directly into that overlap calculation and into a standard analytic transit-duration formula, so every number on the readout panel (transit depth, duration, current flux) is derived rather than dressed up. A limb-darkening toggle switches between a flat stellar disc and a quadratic-limb-darkening-weighted one, which is why real transit light curves are U-shaped with softly curved shoulders rather than a flat-bottomed trapezoid.

⚙ Under the hood

2D transit-method lab: exact circle-overlap geometry between a star disc and a planet disc drives a live light curve, with orbital period, radius ratio, orbit distance, impact parameter and a limb-darkening toggle all feeding the same physics used to fit real transit photometry.

Transit MethodExoplanetsLight CurveLimb Darkening

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install