A WebGL homage to the Geochron world clock: a live globe with a real-time day/night terminator, computed in a shader from the actual position of the sun.

Controls

drag rotate  ·  scroll / pinch zoom  ·  double-click fly there  ·  hover dots for details.
⌖ ISS in the dock keeps the station centered while it orbits.
The time dock scrubs up to ±24 h and can run time at up to one day per second — watch the terminator sweep and the analemma's seasonal swing.

Layers

Globe and marker layers are cheap and can all be on. Live data layers stream from external APIs and are capped at two at a time to keep the globe smooth: enabling a third switches the oldest one off.

Data: NASA Blue Marble & night lights (via three-globe) · USGS earthquakes · NOAA SWPC OVATION aurora · CelesTrak TLEs · OpenSky Network · Natural Earth borders. Sun, moon, ISS and satellite positions are computed client-side (SGP4 via satellite.js).