Simulating the solar system with under 100 lines of code in Python

This is a Python program I wrote to simulate a quite realistic solar system with minimal lines of code.

Download a full animation video.

Author

Chong-Chong He (che1234 @ umd.edu)

numpy, matplotlib, datetime

Optional: astroquery (to retrieve planets data from nasa.org and generate initial condition)

With the required modules installed, simply run the program, e.g. in UNIX command line, with

python solar_system.py

Modify sim_duration in the beginning of the code to change the duration of the simulation.

To make a different initial condition, modify and run get_initial_condition.py.