AstroGrid turns your browser into a spaceship. Fly from Earth's surface to the edge of the observable universe, all in real 3D. • 119K real stars (HYG catalog) with accurate B-V colors • NASA JPL orbital mechanics for the Solar System, in real time • 14K deep-sky objects, black holes with gravitational lensing, pulsars, supernovae, and gravitational-wave events • Runs entirely client-side. No install, no signup. Built for the curious students, educators, and space nerds.
Quick context on why I built AstroGrid : I wanted to make something for anyone who's curious about the universe, whether you're a student, a self-learner, a teacher, or just someone who likes staring at space at 2am. Every explainer I could find was either a flat textbook diagram or a YouTube video you'd zone out of in 30 seconds. I wanted something you could just grab, tilt, spin, and fly through.
It kept growing, and now it's a 3D atlas of the universe you can explore in your browser. No install, no signup. Built with classroom and self-learner use in mind.
A few things you can actually figure out by using it
How big things really are. Park Earth next to Jupiter, then next to the Sun. Numbers like "100x larger" don't really land until you see it. Same with distance: flying from Earth to Mars at a fixed speed feels very different from reading "225 million km."
Why Kepler's laws look the way they do. Crank the time speed up and watch Mercury whip around while Neptune barely moves. You stop needing to memorize the law and just see why it has to be true.
Why eclipses don't happen every month. The Moon's orbit is tilted, and that's almost impossible to picture from a 2D diagram. In 3D it's obvious in about five seconds.
Constellations aren't flat. Fly sideways out of the solar system and watch Orion fall apart. The "belt" is actually three stars at wildly different distances. This one tends to genuinely surprise people.
What a black hole does to light. There's a real general-relativity lensing effect around the black holes, and you can orbit one and watch the background stars bend around it. Hard to forget once you've seen it.
The scale of the universe. Zoom out from your street to the Solar System, to the Milky Way, to the Local Group, to the cosmic web. The sheer emptiness between things is the part that hits hardest.
Everything is based on real astronomical data (NASA JPL for the Solar System, the HYG catalog for stars, OpenNGC for deep-sky objects, LIGO data for gravitational wave events, etc.), so what you're seeing isn't decorative. It's where those things actually are.
If you teach, or you're just curious about space, I'd really love to hear what's confusing, what's missing, or what you wish you could do next. That feedback is what shapes the next update.
the constellations point is the one that actually changes how you think about them permanently. once you know Orion's belt stars are at completely different distances it's impossible to unsee. curious whether the classroom use case shaped any specific design decisions, or did that come later once you saw how people were actually using it?
Hey John! The 'in your browser' bit is the hard part I guess! universe-scale rendering means lod strategy is the make-or-break call. Are you streaming pre-built tiles for the deep zoom, or is it procedural extrapolation outward from real catalogs (gaia, sdss) with hand-curated near-sol detail? curious how you handle the seam between real data and the procedural fill. congrats on the launch, good luck!
The "flat textbook diagram → actually fly through it" reframe is exactly what's missing from most explanatory media. We've been overusing static visuals for things that only make intuitive sense in motion. Adjacent take from a different domain: I built StoryRoute (https://storyroute.netlify.app/), an interactive city-walk app that does the same thing for travel — instead of reading a top-10 list, you walk the city as a narrative. Same instinct: replace passive consumption with embodied exploration. Curious whether AstroGrid plans curated guided tours (Voyager probe trajectory, Kepler's discovery walkthrough), or stays open-ended exploration?
About AstroGrid on Product Hunt
“Explore the entire universe in your browser, in real 3D”
AstroGrid launched on Product Hunt on April 30th, 2026 and earned 106 upvotes and 11 comments, placing #13 on the daily leaderboard. AstroGrid turns your browser into a spaceship. Fly from Earth's surface to the edge of the observable universe, all in real 3D. • 119K real stars (HYG catalog) with accurate B-V colors • NASA JPL orbital mechanics for the Solar System, in real time • 14K deep-sky objects, black holes with gravitational lensing, pulsars, supernovae, and gravitational-wave events • Runs entirely client-side. No install, no signup. Built for the curious students, educators, and space nerds.
AstroGrid was featured in Education (78.4k followers), Space (8.6k followers) and Science (1.3k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 27.7k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted AstroGrid?
AstroGrid was hunted by John Lee - AstroGrid. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how AstroGrid stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
John Lee - AstroGrid
Hey everyone,
Quick context on why I built AstroGrid : I wanted to make something for anyone who's curious about the universe, whether you're a student, a self-learner, a teacher, or just someone who likes staring at space at 2am. Every explainer I could find was either a flat textbook diagram or a YouTube video you'd zone out of in 30 seconds. I wanted something you could just grab, tilt, spin, and fly through.
It kept growing, and now it's a 3D atlas of the universe you can explore in your browser. No install, no signup. Built with classroom and self-learner use in mind.
A few things you can actually figure out by using it
Everything is based on real astronomical data (NASA JPL for the Solar System, the HYG catalog for stars, OpenNGC for deep-sky objects, LIGO data for gravitational wave events, etc.), so what you're seeing isn't decorative. It's where those things actually are.
If you teach, or you're just curious about space, I'd really love to hear what's confusing, what's missing, or what you wish you could do next. That feedback is what shapes the next update.
Thanks for taking a look.