Your view is local. The geometry is universal.

The instrument starts with what is visible from where you stand: the Sun, the Moon, and the naked-eye planets, positioned in real time using real astronomical calculations. From there it lets you pull back — to the turning ground beneath you, then to the solar system itself — so the same object stays recognizable at every scale.

The goal is orientation, not spectacle. A person should be able to look at the sky, or at a diagram of the solar system, and understand not just what they're seeing but why it looks that way from here, right now.

Most representations of the solar system start with scale — planets lined up, sizes compared, distances flattened into a chart. We start with orientation instead: where you are, which way you're facing, what time it is, and what that means for what's above your horizon. Scale comes after orientation, as a second, explicitly-labeled step, so the two are never confused with each other.

Positions, phases, rise and set times, and distances are computed from real astronomical models, not illustrations. Where a view is compressed or exaggerated for legibility — orbit radii, body sizes, the spacetime-curvature analogies — that is stated plainly, next to the view itself, not buried in a footnote. If a calculation can't be produced reliably, the app says so rather than guessing.

There is no account. A shared "perspective" or invitation link encodes what it needs to reproduce a view — a location, a time, a selected object — directly in the URL, with the sharer choosing how precisely to share location. Details of exactly what those links contain, and what stays local to your browser, are on the privacy page.

The core experience — your sky, the Earth-rotation view, the solar system, and shared moments — is free to use in a browser, with no sign-up. That is the current state of the product, not a promotional trial.

Today the instrument covers the Sun, Moon, and naked-eye planets from any location on Earth, plus a modeled view of the wider solar system: planets, several moons, and a handful of small bodies with their own valid date ranges. It does not yet cover deep-sky objects, satellites, or precise atmospheric conditions like cloud cover.

We want the app to be genuinely useful in classrooms and at home for building intuition about rotation, orbits, phases, and reference frames — not as a substitute for a curriculum, but as a live demonstration a teacher or parent can point to. See the educators page for concrete ways to use it today.

The long-term direction is outward: from the visible planets toward a fuller model of the solar system and, eventually, the broader universe, always keeping the same principle — start from where you actually are. We are not publishing dates for that expansion, because we would rather ship it than promise it.

Universal Perspective is currently an independent project. We are not a registered nonprofit or charity, and we don't claim tax-exempt or charitable status.