Satellite: real orbits that keep time with your song

Every look of the visualizer shows the same system: real two-body orbits round the Earth, seen from space, on a world map, as a mega-constellation, on a mission control room's wall, close up as a satellite unfolds its panels, and from a hillside at night. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

The orbits are generic: no live tracking data is fetched, and no satellite is a real one or carries the name of a company, a product or a mission. You see a space station, a weather satellite, navigation satellites and a geostationary ring.

• Open the Satellite template

Each satellite has the elements a real orbit has: its size, its shape, its tilt to the equator, where it crosses the equator going north and where its closest point to the Earth is. Where it is at any moment comes from Kepler's equation, solved step by step, so a satellite on a long ellipse sweeps fast past its low point and slowly round its high one, as Kepler's second law says. Its place is then turned from space into a point over the turning Earth.

The Earth turns under the orbits, so a ground track drifts west orbit after orbit as a real one does, and a geostationary satellite, which goes round once a day, hangs over one place. With Node drift up, the Earth's bulge turns each orbit's plane (the J2 effect, drawn up to 12 times faster than it is): a tilted orbit's plane swings west, and the weather satellite's polar orbit swings east with the sun, which is what a sun-synchronous orbit does.

Every orbit's period is a whole number of bars: a low orbit takes one bar, the navigation orbit half a day and the geostationary ring a whole day, which is 8 bars, one phrase. The sizes follow from Kepler's third law, so the shells keep their real proportions. A low satellite passes the same point on every downbeat, the space station is over the ground station on the first downbeat of every phrase, and with no song analysis a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same picture.

The highs light the low orbits' trails, the bass swells the coverage circles and the cities' lights, the build launches new satellites up into their shell, and the drop lights every link between the satellites at once. In the night sky an orbit takes 48 bars, with 6 satellites following each other round each one, so a phrase later the next one is where the last one was; each crosses on its own downbeat, and on the drop the one highest in the sky catches the sun.

The Earth is drawn with code, not a photograph: the land is Natural Earth's (public domain), merged into one so no border is drawn, the deserts, forests and ice are soft tints, the clouds turn with the Earth, the night side's edge is the real line where the sun sets, and the cities' lights come from the site's own maps. The stars are the real ones, from the same catalogue the Constellations visualizer uses, each at its place, brightness and colour.

Each look is the same system seen another way:

• Orbit View: The Earth from space with its shells of satellites: a space station and a weather satellite circling once a bar, navigation satellites at half a day, a long ellipse and the geostationary ring hanging over one place as the Earth turns under it. The highs light the trails and the drop links every satellite to its neighbours.
• Ground Track: A world map with each satellite's track drawn as it flies, drifting west orbit after orbit as the Earth turns: the space station's waves, a polar weather satellite, a long ellipse's loop and a geosynchronous figure eight. Coverage circles swell with the bass and cities light as a pass goes over.
• Shell Constellation: A mega-constellation round a night Earth: hundreds of satellites in rings of planes. The planes light in turn round the bar, the build launches new trains up into the shells and the drop draws the whole mesh of links between them.
• Mission Control: A control room's lit wall: the world map with the tracks, telemetry from the real orbit ticking on the beat, a sky plot of the pass and a pass clock counting the bar, while the next pass's arc lights up through the build.
• Deploy: Close on a satellite leaving its upper stage high over the Earth: it springs free on the phrase, its solar panels unfold one bar at a time, its antenna sweeps with the mids and its thrusters puff on the kick.
• Night Pass: A night sky from a hillside after dusk: the real stars, the Milky Way, and satellites crossing among them on the beat, lit by a sun already set, fading as they pass into the Earth's shadow. On the drop one catches the sun in a brief flare.

Every bright change (the sun's glint on the sea, the space station catching the sun, the solar panels' shine as they open, the night sky's flare, the drop's links, the cities lighting under a pass) goes through the flash limiter first, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second. The map's grid, the mega-constellation's planes and its mesh of links are repeating patterns, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Orbit rings: How brightly each orbit is drawn as a lit ring round the Earth. From 0 to 1.5.
• Satellites: How many satellites fill the shells, the planes of the mega-constellation and the trains crossing the night sky. From 0.25 to 2.
• Links: How bright the links between satellites are: lit all at once on the drop, then fading over two bars. From 0 to 1.5.
• Trail length: How far back the trails and ground tracks reach behind each satellite. From 0 to 2.
• Earth style: How the Earth is drawn: natural (blue sea, land, ice and clouds), night (the dark side's city lights everywhere) or hologram (glowing coasts on a grid). Choose Natural, Night or Hologram.
• Clouds: Clouds over the Earth, turning with it. From 0 to 1.
• City lights: The lights of the cities on the night side, pulsing with the bass and lit under a pass. From 0 to 2.
• Node drift: How much the Earth's bulge turns each orbit's plane (the J2 effect, shown up to twelve times faster than it is). At 0 a phrase-long clip loops exactly. From 0 to 1.
• Sun flare: The sun's glints: on the sea, on the space station on the drop, on the solar panels as they unfold, and the brief flare of a satellite catching the sun in the night sky. From 0 to 1.5.
• Labels: Small labels naming each kind of satellite (a space station, a weather satellite, navigation) and the map's readouts. Choose On or Off.
• Variation: Another take: where the satellites start round their orbits, the clouds and the night's passes. The same number always gives the same picture. From 0 to 99.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each look's own layers (the stars, the Earth, the orbit rings, the trails, the links, the satellites, the map, the tracks, the wall's panels, the hillside) on their own, to add to any project. Motion graphics has every look as a design to customize; Generate visualizer can put a satellite layer over your picture; and the Stream studio has it in its rotation.

• Browse Layer assets
• Generate a visualizer from a picture

Ask for it by name: "make a satellite visualizer", "an orbit video for TikTok", "a space station lyric video" or "a ground track visualizer", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "more satellites", "turn the links up" or "switch to the night pass"; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's looks and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.