A meditation in motion
With Earth. Rest here. Travel with the world.
A real map, a wider perspective, and your own place within it. Explore the movement without needing to feel it. Breathe naturally; nothing needs to be achieved.
Begin anywhere. The opening location is an example at 0° N, 0° E—not a guess about you. Choose a place on the map, enter coordinates, or opt in to device location.
Example place · choose your own when ready. Return to here ↙
EarthYOUR PLACE Solar systemOUR ORBIT GalaxyWIDER MOTION Your lookLOCAL DIRECTION Your postureTWO HANDS
Touch: scroll ← → ↑ ↓ + −
Small view on Reset view
Earth around Sun Your chosen look Sun in Galactic frame Directions only · not a speed scale
A textured 3D globe. Terrain and ocean-floor colors come from a fixed relief map. Day and night follow the approximate Sun direction; the night side is brightened for reading.
Turning the globe changes the view, not your chosen place or looking direction.
The figure is a generic illustration, not a measurement of your body. Left and right belong to the figure; a front view is not a mirror. Rest comfortably, use small gestures, and skip any pose that would strain you. Never look directly at the Sun.
Read the motion grid
These are Earth-centered display axes, not a latitude/longitude replacement. The grid passes through Earth; its hidden parts and the backs of arrows are occluded. Grid spacing and arrow lengths are not distance or speed scales. The motion frame updates as the chosen vector changes.
The small orbit arc belongs only to the Sun-relative orbital view. An instantaneous arrow is not a prediction of a straight future path.
DEVICE TIME · REAL-TIME 1×
Now Hold Time preview
Your place · Earth’s spin — m/s relative to Earth’s center Earth · around the Sun — km/s heliocentric approximation Sun · Galactic frame — km/s adopted model, not live data
These are different reference frames—not three speeds to add as numbers. A combined vector is available in the direction panel. “Real-time” means calculations at your device’s current time, not a live tracking feed.
An optional quiet journey
Here, within a moving world. Fewer controls Five gentle invitations, from the place beneath you to the wider sky and back. No prescribed breathing, closed eyes, or perfect state.
Journey duration 3 minutes 6 minutes 9 minutes Begin quietly
01 / HERE
1 2 3 4 5
Pause journey Return to here ↙
01 / Place
Where are you? Choose any place to explore. Nothing is requested or saved automatically.
Use my location Follow location
Example coordinates. Device location is off.
Set this place Clear my place
Tap this map to choose a place. Exact streets are not shown.
Center my place Choose on globe
Earth surface Relief & ocean floor · NOAA Natural color · NASA Blue Marble
Fixed global map on a sphere, not live weather or a detailed terrain mesh. Browser/OS location services may use their own network provider.
02 / Look
A comfortable direction. Enter where you are looking in the real world. The blue ray is your chosen line of sight—not a direction you must follow.
Set my look See this direction ↗
N E S W North, along the horizon.
Use phone turns · optional This is a relative pose tracker , not an automatic true-north compass. First enter a known true bearing and elevation, aim the phone’s back camera that way, then calibrate. No camera images are taken.
Enable phone motion Stop motion
Waiting for orientation data. Your manual direction stays in use.
Use this pose for my entered direction Off. No sensor permission requested.
Sensor reference frames and drift vary by device. Recalibrate after changing your grip. A magnetic compass reading needs a local declination correction before treating it as true north. Manual controls always work.
Use while resting somewhere safe—not driving or walking with the screen. Never look directly at the Sun or aim an optical instrument at it. A below-horizon arrow is mathematical; it is not something visible through the ground.
03 / Relate
Which way is motion? Motion to compare with your look Your place · Earth’s spin Earth · relative to the Sun Sun · adopted Galactic frame Your place · combined Galactic vector
True bearing —
Elevation —
From your look —
Speed in this frame — The Sun and Galactic center
The direction toward the Galactic center is not the direction of the Sun’s motion . They are shown separately.
Approximate directions, not a navigation aid. Earth is not on a fixed spiral trail carried forward by the Sun; every path needs a stated frame.
The map beneath the meditation
× A real map. An explicit model. This is a reflective orientation tool, not a live ephemeris service, navigation instrument, camera overlay, or clinical treatment. The reflections are invitations; stop or return to the room at any point.
Camera anchor: Earth stays at the center of the Earth view. Rotation and zoom never fit both Earth and the Sun as a group. The Sun is an illustration in the modeled direction; it can move off-screen or behind Earth. An edge cue marks its direction when outside the view.
What is real-time? The page recalculates for your device’s clock. It uses embedded JPL approximate orbital elements , not a network feed. The source’s Earth row is the Earth–Moon barycenter , used here as an approximate Earth trajectory. The supported interval is 2000–2049. In the separate Solar system view distances are linear and bodies are enlarged. In the Earth view the Sun’s distance and both body sizes are independently rescaled to fit the scene; they are not to scale.
Which physical map? NOAA ETOPO1 is a color-shaded relief and ocean-floor map. NASA Blue Marble is a static natural-color composite. Both are mapped onto a smooth 3D sphere. They are not live clouds or a street map, and ETOPO’s seabed colors do not show what the ocean looks like from space. Shading follows the model Sun; the night side is lifted for legibility.
Embedded images were obtained from the installed basemap-data 2.0.0 distribution and downsampled. Source identities, SHA-256 checksums, and the distribution’s MIT license are in the kit. No fonts or image files are fetched at runtime.
A movement-aligned 3D scene The default Earth grid is centered on Earth. Its X axis follows the currently selected motion vector. Y points along the part of the Sun direction perpendicular to X, and Z completes a right-handed frame. In orbital mode that plane closely follows the orbital plane. The other motion selections create different display planes; they must not be confused with Earth’s orbit. If the selected vector is zero (for spin at a pole), there is no motion arrow; an explicitly labeled orbital-reference grid is used instead.
The motion and gaze arrows are shaded cylinder-and-cone meshes, projected with the same 3D camera as Earth. Hidden portions are depth-tested against the globe. This is an orthographic view, not a sky-camera overlay or stereoscopic display. The opening, “Orbital plane,” and Reset view use an Earth-centered camera looking side-on along the modeled Earth–Sun orbital plane. The orbital normal points up on screen, and Earth’s center and the illustrated Sun’s center lie on the same horizontal line in the zero-tilt opening. Tilting reveals depth without banking the view. The grid looks edge-on until you drag to look above or below it. The globe retains its modeled axial tilt, surface orientation, and lighting. This camera reference is independent of the selected motion layer; a spin or Galactic-motion grid can have a different plane. “Center on my place” aims at the chosen geographic point while retaining the orbital reference for camera up, subject to the tilt limit. Horizontal drags turn around the orbital normal; vertical drags change camera elevation, limited to 85° above or below the orbital plane. There is no free banking or roll. Touch rotation is enabled with Touch: rotate. “Motion view,” “Above the grid,” and “Look back along motion” are optional presets that alter only the viewing camera. All presets share that same no-roll constraint, even when a different motion grid is selected. They do not move your selected location or aim your real-world gaze.
The Sun is an illustrated sphere placed in the calculated Earth-to-Sun direction. Earth illumination uses that same direction. Its displayed radius and distance are deliberately compressed relative to Earth, so the scene does not reproduce true angular sizes, eclipses, or transit geometry. The numerical distance is shown separately. The curved arc, when present, is a compressed approximate orbital segment, not a path on Earth’s surface.
The three movements are not interchangeable. Your spin speed is relative to Earth’s center. Earth’s orbital motion is relative to the Sun. Solar Galactic motion uses the pinned Astropy v4.0 parameter set , not a new measurement: a distance near 8.122 kiloparsecs, solar height 20.8 parsecs, and velocity components (12.9, 245.6, 7.78) km/s in that convention. Their magnitude is about 246 km/s. Other declared models can give different values.
The combined option rotates all three vectors into the same axes before adding them. It is an approximate Newtonian composition, not an absolute speed. The galaxy background is an illustration. Its decorative stars are not catalog positions, and the dashed radius ring is not a computed future orbit.
One gaze, several scales The local east–north–up gaze vector is rotated into Earth-fixed, J2000 equatorial, ecliptic, or adopted Galactocentric axes. A gaze is a direction, not a velocity: no solar velocity is added to it. The Solar system view attaches the gaze to the Earth marker; the surface offset is unresolved. The Galactic view attaches all three arrows to the combined Sun/Earth marker. Its gold arrow is the Earth-relative-to-Sun velocity expressed in Galactic axes, not Earth’s total Galactic velocity. Arrow lengths are deliberately not proportional to speed.
Your posture: a local direction sketch A generic low-polygon figure stands in a local east–north–up frame. Its torso faces the entered true bearing, and its head, nose and blue ray follow the entered elevation. By default the figure’s right hand points in Earth’s heliocentric orbital direction and its left hand toward the Sun; Swap hands reverses that assignment. Finger axes follow the calculated directions, but the arm shape is only a schematic—not anatomical or posture advice. The view behind the figure is not mirrored.
The dotted ring at shoulder height represents horizon directions. A Sun or motion marker below that plane is below the geometric horizon, not an object visible through terrain. The ground is a wireframe so the diagram can show those directions. The orbit sketch is a compressed approximate path, offset to the Sun-pointing shoulder for readability. The Sun’s size and nearby placement are illustrative. No body tracking, camera, image capture, or additional location permissions are introduced.
Your location and direction Nothing requests location or motion access until you press the corresponding button. “Use my location” requests one position. “Follow location” requests continuing updates until you stop, leave this tab, or return to here. The accuracy readout comes from the browser and is not an independent verification. Your browser or operating system’s location provider may contact its own service.
The app does not transmit coordinates, save a location history, create cookies, or store inputs between visits. It does not put coordinates into a URL. Closing the page normally discards its memory; your browser may retain a back/forward page snapshot. Clear my place removes the active coordinates and stops location and motion tracking, including late permission responses.
Manual bearing is clockwise from true north , with elevation above the geometric horizon. Phone tracking uses a manually calibrated relative orientation. It is not an automatic true-north compass, and it may drift. Sensors and geolocation can require HTTPS, permission, and compatible hardware. In a web preview or local file they may be unavailable; map and manual input do not need them.
No camera or microphone is opened. “Your look” is a calculated direction diagram, not a view of the actual sky. Below-horizon markers are not visible objects. Do not look directly at the Sun.
Coordinates and approximation details Inertial directions use J2000 equatorial axes. We apply IAU-1976 precession and an approximate Greenwich mean sidereal angle to rotate into Earth-fixed axes, then project into geodetic east–north–up at the chosen location. Browser UTC is used in place of UT1 and in the approximate orbital-time argument. We omit polar motion, nutation, leap-second/TT/TDB corrections, aberration, refraction, topography, observer altitude, and the Moon’s displacement of Earth from the EMB.
vspin ≈ ω N(φ) cos φcombined = vSun,Galactic + vEarth,Sun + vplace,Earth
The surface is drawn as a sphere; the spin-speed radius uses WGS84 latitude geometry. At a geographic pole the spin speed is zero and its heading is undefined. True north at a pole requires a meridian convention. Arrows use display lengths, not speed-proportional lengths. Readouts are rounded educational estimates.
Sources you can inspect NAIF: constructing a right-handed reference frame from two vectors (background reference; the display frame here is independently implemented).JPL: approximate planetary elements and their limitations U.S. Naval Observatory: sidereal time and altitude and azimuth Astropy: Galactocentric frame and explicit parameter conventions Basemap: ETOPO and Blue Marble image provenance MDN: optional browser geolocation W3C: device-orientation coordinate conventions With Earth · 1.5 · Orbital-level camera & posture study · independent educational implementation · no external runtime dependencies. Sources do not endorse this tool.