Meteorium — Meteor Dust Trails

Meteorium is an astronomy app that scientifically visualises the "dust
trails" — the ribbons of comet dust that give rise to meteor showers.

It shows 60,000 dust grains released by comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, the
parent of the Perseid meteor shower, over its eight perihelion returns
from 1079 to 1992. Each grain is ejected from the comet's nucleus
around perihelion and followed by full orbital integration including
planetary gravity and solar radiation pressure, then rendered in 3D
against NASA's all-sky star maps. The comet's position at the moment of
ejection is anchored to the JPL Horizons ephemeris, which uses an orbit
solution fitted to the observations of each historical apparition.

Features:
• 3D dust trails coloured by ejection year
• Multiple viewpoints (ecliptic north/south, latitude sweep, Sun,
ground, comet) plus a free view that tours the highlights every 10 s
• Run time forward/backward at 10-10,000x to watch the trails evolve
• Realistic Milky Way (NASA Deep Star Maps 2020), constellation lines
and names, planets
• Japanese / English

Why do meteor showers return on the same dates every year? How does
comet dust spread through the solar system? Meteorium shows you the
three-dimensional structure and its evolution over time — and from the
ground view you can simply enjoy the meteor shower itself.

The app works fully offline, with no data collection and no ads.
A Pro edition — theory computation for every shower, worldwide
observation databases, ZHR outburst forecasts, dust-trail
cross-sections, recording and image export — is in preparation.