gcdatlas

0.27.1010 Nov 2026Globular clusters round the giant galaxies

The elliptical galaxies of the Virgo Cluster, M87, M105 and M110 are now surrounded by their swarms of globular clusters, from a handful to 13,000, each at its published number. They no longer all look alike.
M60 and M105 open with their neighbours beside them.
The Fornax and Sagittarius dwarfs show their few globular clusters too.

0.27.910 Nov 2026Rings that look like rings

The Helix, the Southern Ring and the Ring Nebula now open as a glowing ring in dark sky, with a dark middle, like the famous photos. Their glow used to fill most of the screen.
Up close they are easier on the eye too.

0.27.810 Nov 2026The Orion Nebula, sharper

The Orion Nebula has its shape back: a bright core round the Trapezium, two wings of glowing gas, the dark bay to the north, and dust lanes across the middle.
Up close it reads as clouds instead of a screen full of white.

0.27.710 Nov 2026Star clusters that look like clusters

The 26 open clusters, the Beehive and the Wild Duck among them, now open as a swarm of stars that thickens toward the middle. Before, most showed a few bright crosses on black.
Their first two angles stand outside the cluster, the third inside it.
Every star is still one Gaia measured, at its real place on the sky.

0.27.610 Nov 2026The Moon without the pop

Flying to the Moon, NASA's map is now fetched as the flight sets out, so you arrive on the real Moon. Before, it switched about a second after you got there.
On a slow connection the map can still come in late. It then dissolves in over 3 seconds instead of 0.4.

0.27.510 Nov 2026A steadier clock

A Crew Dragon replay you are not watching no longer moves the date on a day when it docks. Before, the Moon hopped 14 degrees in one frame.
Watch a Dragon flight and nothing changes: it still skips about a day to the docking, behind a fade.

0.27.410 Nov 2026A steadier test

Behind the scenes: the check that flies the Halo on a fixed route now gives the same answer on every run. A launch replay could move the atlas clock on a day in the middle of it.
Nothing changes on screen.

0.27.310 Nov 2026Easier to read

Names stay readable over bright scenes: every label has a dark plate behind it, and the scale on the right a soft shade.
New here? A small card at the bottom says how to look round, zoom and fly. It goes away once you have tried.
On a phone the small buttons are easier to hit. They look the same and take taps over a larger area.
The fonts now come from gcdatlas itself, so the site asks no other company's servers for anything.

0.27.210 Nov 2026Smoother on slow devices

The atlas takes about half as much of your processor's time for each frame, so motion is smoother on phones and older laptops.
Detail is no longer lowered when a slow processor is the cause. Bigger characters would not have made it any faster.
The first picture appears a little sooner, and "loading the atlas..." shows while you wait.

0.27.19 Nov 2026Smoother landings on the Moon

Flying down to a place on the Moon no longer swings the camera round at the very end.
Standing by a lander, the ground now reaches all the way to the horizon.
Hadley Rille and the Apollo 15 site keep their sharpest ground in view.
Tycho and Copernicus show their real sizes in the atlas: 85 km and 96 km across.

0.27.09 Nov 2026The Moon up close

Fly down to Tranquility Base and the other five Apollo landing sites, Hadley Rille, Tycho and Copernicus, drawn in 3D from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photos and heights.
Each lunar module's descent stage stands where its crew left it, as a small labelled model.
You arrive in the morning, the Sun as low as when the crews landed, so every crater and hill casts a long shadow.
Up close, the Moon's globe now shows NASA's real map of the whole Moon.
New tour, Footsteps on the Moon: the six landings in order, then Tycho and Copernicus.

0.26.09 Nov 2026Earthquakes and fires, live

This week's earthquakes on the real Earth, from the USGS: a dot where each one struck and a ring for the last two days, red, violet or blue by how deep it was.
The last day's fires glow like embers on Earth's night side, from NASA's fire satellites.
From Earth's card, fly to the week's biggest quake or replay the whole week in 40 seconds.
A big one (magnitude 7 or more) in the last day gets a note when you look at Earth.
Turn them off in settings, under show: quakes & fires.

0.25.19 Nov 2026Every place's page, from the atlas

The last line of the atlas list now links to every place as a page to read (gcdatlas.com/places). It opens in a new tab, so the atlas stays where you left it.
The browser tab now says what this is: gcdatlas · the real universe, drawn in ASCII.

0.25.09 Nov 2026Every Messier object

The last 28 Messier objects, so all 110 are here: 20 galaxies, 6 star clusters, and M40 and M73.
The Virgo Cluster is a place of its own: its 16 Messier galaxies at their measured distances, and about 1,000 more galaxies around them.
M40 and M73 look like little groups from Earth, but their stars lie hundreds of light-years apart. Fly round them to see it.
M32 and M110, Andromeda's two bright companions, have their own places in the atlas now.
A new badge for seeing all 110, and the Messier marathon tour now visits every one.

0.24.18 Nov 2026A page for every place

Every place in the atlas has a page of its own to read: its picture, what it is, how far away and how big, and more places like it. See them all at gcdatlas.com/places.
Search engines can find these pages now, so looking up a place can lead you here.
A button on each page opens the place in the atlas. Shared links still open the atlas straight away.
Visits to these pages are counted the way the atlas counts them: the page's address only, no cookies, nothing kept on your device.

0.24.025 Oct 2026Links that show the place

Share a place and the link now unfurls as that place on Discord, Slack, X, WhatsApp and the rest: its name, a line about it and its own picture.
The copied link still opens exactly the view you were on, and every old link keeps working.
The text copy in photo mode now ends with the place's link, so a pasted picture says where it lives.

0.23.018 Oct 2026Three moons and two pairs of stars

Saturn's moons Tethys, Dione and Rhea join the atlas, each with its own real markings: Tethys's giant crater Odysseus and its 2,000 km canyon, Dione's bright ice cliffs, Rhea's young ray crater Inktomi.
All three are where they really are along their orbits, so they pass through Saturn's shadow at the real times.
Capella and Spica are drawn as the pairs of stars they are, on their real orbits, sped up: two yellow giants, and two hot blue stars, the bigger one bulging at its equator from its fast spin.

0.22.018 Oct 2026Las Vegas

Las Vegas in 3D as it is today, with its traffic, the planes at Harry Reid Airport, local time and real weather.
The Sphere with shows on its outside, the High Roller lit at night, the Luxor's pyramid and its beam of light, the STRAT and the Fremont Street canopy.
The Fountains of Bellagio rise on their real schedule: every 30 minutes in the afternoon, every 15 minutes from 8 pm to midnight.
What is being built right now: Hard Rock's guitar-shaped tower, topped out in May, and the Athletics' ballpark with its first two roof arches.

0.21.018 Oct 2026Every Messier globular cluster

25 more globular clusters, so all 29 in Messier's list are here: from M71, so loose it was long taken for an open cluster, to M54, the heart of a small galaxy the Milky Way is pulling apart.
Each one is shaped by its real measurements: how tight its core is, how flat it is, and the colours of its stars.
Pease 1, the first planetary nebula found inside a globular cluster, glows among M15's stars.
Ganymede, Callisto, Canopus, Tau Ceti and eight small galaxies near ours now have their own places in the atlas, with their real sizes and shapes.
The Messier marathon tour grows to 79 stops. 82 of Messier's 110 objects are in so far.

0.19.118 Oct 2026One of each

Behind the scenes: checks that stop the same star, nebula or galaxy from being added to the atlas twice.
Nothing changes on screen.

0.19.08 Oct 2026Six more cities

Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sydney, Rome, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro in 3D, in the same model style, with their traffic, planes, boats, local time and real weather.
Their landmarks in their real shapes and sizes: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Colosseum, St Peter's, the Hollywood sign and Christ the Redeemer.

0.18.08 Oct 2026Star clusters from their real stars

19 more Messier objects: the Little Dumbbell, the reflection nebula M78, the Sagittarius Star Cloud and sixteen open clusters, from the Butterfly Cluster to M67, one of the oldest known.
Every open cluster is now drawn from its real stars, measured by the Gaia space telescope: each one where it really is on the sky, as bright and as coloured as it really is.
The Messier marathon tour grows to 54 stops. 57 of Messier's 110 objects are in so far.

0.17.28 Oct 2026Lighter link previews

When a gcdatlas link is shared in a chat or a post, the app that draws its preview now gets a 2 KB page with the title and picture, not the whole 2.5 MB atlas.
Nothing changes for you: anyone who opens the link gets the full atlas, as before.

0.17.17 Oct 2026Counting visits, privately

Visits are now counted with Vercel Web Analytics, so we can see how many people explore the atlas.
No cookies, and nothing is saved on your device. A visit sends the page's address (not the place you are looking at), the site you came from, your country, browser and kind of device.
Nothing is sent if your browser asks sites not to track you (Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track).

0.17.04 Oct 2026Cities you can read, alive from afar

The five cities in a new style, like an architect's model: every building in one clean colour from the city's real roofs (Paris zinc and slate, London slate and clay tile, Tokyo concrete), outlined, on darker streets.
Traffic shows from 15 km: streams of white and red lights along the main roads at night, moving dashes by day.
Planes are easy to spot: shaped like planes, flying in over the city, with a small label such as "landing at Heathrow". Airliners passing high overhead leave white trails by day.

0.16.04 Oct 2026Twenty Messier objects and a Messier marathon

20 famous objects from Charles Messier's catalogue: the Dumbbell, Owl, Trifid and Omega nebulae, the Beehive and Wild Duck clusters, the globular clusters M3, M4 and M22, and ten galaxies, among them the Sunflower, the Black Eye, the Phantom and the Leo Triplet.
A new tour, the Messier marathon: every Messier object in the atlas, in the order observers find them on one night in March.
The atlas now works through two public lists, Messier's 110 and the Caldwell 109. So far 38 of the Messier objects are in, with more to come.
Search any of them by number, like M27 or NGC 6853.

0.15.04 Oct 2026Famous places in 3D

30 famous places on Earth in 3D from real satellite images and heights: Everest, the Grand Canyon, the Alps, Kilimanjaro, Fuji, the Sahara's Richat Structure, the Amazon, Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef, Hawaii, Iceland, Antarctica, Greenland, the Palm, the Panama Canal, the Great Wall, Giza and more.
Find them in the atlas under "on Earth" (a new kind: built by people), by their marks on the globe, or by any of their names in the search.
Each one opens close enough to know it, then goes wide and closer, by day with the Sun to the side so the mountains stand out.
A new tour, wonders of Earth, flies to all 30, west round the world.

0.14.04 Oct 2026The cities come alive

Traffic on the real roads of all five cities: headlights and red tail lights at night, busier at rush hour, on the side of the road each city drives on. By day the cars are small specks.
Planes land and take off at the 14 real airports, on the runways that face into the real wind. They are simulated, not live flights.
Boats on the Seine, the Thames, New York harbour, Tokyo Bay and Dubai Creek, along the real ferry routes.
Tokyo Tower and the Skytree in their real shapes and colours. At night Tokyo Tower glows orange and the Skytree blue or purple.

0.13.04 Oct 2026Five cities in 3D, real clouds

New York, Tokyo, Dubai, London and Paris stand up in 3D, in the colours of their buildings: Paris stone and zinc roofs, New York brick and glass, London brick and Portland stone. Each opens on a landmark, with warning lights on the towers, local time and real weather. At night your eyes adjust and the city glows.
The Eiffel Tower in its real shape and size: four curved legs, the arches, three floors and the antenna. At night it glows gold, and sparkles for 5 minutes on the hour.
Find places on Earth as you go: famous places are marked on the globe (click one), and scrolling in close to Earth takes you down to the nearest one.
Near the ground it moves like Google Earth: drag to move over it, scroll toward a spot, right-drag to turn and tilt, W A S D to glide.
The clouds are real: NASA's satellite picture of a recent day, over the whole Earth.

0.12.03 Oct 2026Fly down anywhere on Earth

Places on Earth: open the atlas and pick "on Earth" for famous mountains, deserts, islands, seas and cities, or search any of about 32,000 cities and the highest mountains by name. Pick one and the camera flies down to it.
Mountains stand up in 3D wherever you fly low, from real heights of the land, not only at the launch sites.
Up close, Earth is four times sharper (about 2.4 km a pixel), and you can zoom down to about 330 km above it.
The atlas is easier to find your way in: each kind has its own colour, on its button, its heading and its rows.
Mountains are shown by day. A city keeps the time, so at night you see its lights.

0.11.03 Oct 2026The real Earth from space

Earth now shows its real colours from NASA's Blue Marble, with deserts, forests, ice and the shallow seas as satellites see them.
The seasons change with the date the atlas shows: snow spreads across the north in winter and forests green up in spring. Run the time machine to watch a year go by.
Mountains catch the low Sun at dawn and dusk, from real heights of the land.
Sharper city lights at night, from NASA's Black Marble.
The real maps load only when Earth is near, so the page still opens as fast as before.

0.10.21 Oct 2026The Halo tour, at the tour's pace

The Halo tour now spends about 40 s at each place, like the normal tour.
The Halo arrives straight into its move: through Saturn's rings, through a star's corona, weaving through a nebula. Now and then it arrives on a job instead.
The camera takes turns: wide shots of the place, and close-ups with the Halo a third of the screen and the place big behind it.
The Halo's blue marker stays hidden during the Halo tour.

0.10.11 Oct 2026Smoother launches

Staging plays in real time: the booster's engines shut down in steps and the ship pulls away gently, instead of jumping.
The camera stays with the booster all the way home, through the flip, the burn back and the catch, with no jumps, and the playback speeds up and slows down smoothly.
Drag during a launch to look round the rocket from any angle. The camera follows the flight again 10 s after you let go, or when you press play.
The music stays under the rocket's roar, and the camera shakes less.
When the interface fades, the caption fades too and comes back briefly for each new step.

0.10.030 Sep 2026Launches you can hear, under real skies

Pick a rocket and the camera comes down from space onto the pad in one smooth move, with no jumps or odd angles all the way to orbit.
Hear and feel the launch: a deep rumble and the crackle of the exhaust arriving at the speed of sound, the camera shaking near the pad, a billowing ground cloud and a smoke column drifting in the wind.
Real weather over the pads: clouds, wind and haze as they are there, with cloud shadows moving over the ground.
Starbase as it looks now, from aerial photos taken in January 2026.
Starman's Roadster rebuilt: the real car's shape and size, with Starman at the wheel.

0.9.1230 Sep 2026The Halo tour shows the places

On the Halo tour every shot frames the place first, through a long lens, with the Halo small in front of it.
Close to a planet or a star the place becomes a horizon under the ship.
A click on the Halo during the tour keeps these shots.
The Crab Nebula and other places no longer fade away while you ride with the Halo.

0.9.1130 Sep 2026A face for shared links

A link to gcdatlas now shows a picture when you paste it into a chat or a post: M87*, the black hole, drawn in ASCII.
Pictures you save in photo mode are signed gcdatlas.com.
Help and what's new say who made it, and link to the code on GitHub.

0.9.930 Sep 2026Pip takes the stage

Pip, the Halo's drone, is out for most of every stay, moving smoothly: it plays peekaboo, rides beside you, sits on the bow and chases sparks.
For the weapons test the Halo makes an attack run, nose on the target, and Pip unfolds into a railgun on its needle.
The Halo flies a move made for each place: through Saturn's Cassini Division, low over the Great Red Spot, through a star's corona.
The engines have a short blue flame that grows with speed.
The angle line sits right under the name, and a "Halo tour" switch beside tours lets the Halo fly the tour.

0.9.829 Sep 2026SpaceX launches and Starman's Roadster

Starman and his Tesla Roadster, where they really are right now, 90 million km out on their orbit round the Sun.
Starship, Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Crew Dragon stand on their real pads. Pick one and watch it launch by day: the Starship booster flies back and is caught by its tower.
The ground round the launch sites is real: aerial photos, satellite images, the land's height and the buildings of Starbase, Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg.
One smooth camera from start to finish, about 3 minutes a flight. Want every second? Press "real speed" in the caption.
Real SpaceX launches play live at their scheduled time. Now and then a replay lifts off while you look at Earth.

0.9.629 Sep 2026Ride the Halo, and its tour

Riding the Halo, the camera now keeps the place it is visiting in view behind the ship, and glides from angle to angle.
Like it still? The camera switch next to travel (or K) holds one angle, the place still in view.
New: the Halo tour. Press "halo tour" to ride along while the Halo flies a tour's stops, with a big camera move at every place.
Riding along from far away no longer loses the ship on the way in.
In the screensaver, the angle line sits under the name of the place.

0.9.429 Sep 2026Softer music, sharper planets, a fold cannon

The music's bass is much softer, above all in the calm songs, and the tunes are a little louder.
The planets look sharper up close: real features at their real places, richer colour and a clear line between day and night.
The Halo's weapons test has a new gun that builds itself from embers, with three new shots, all made up.
The Halo's engines leave a trail you can see from afar, so you can tell it is moving.
What's new (this list) is one tap away, beside the ? button. Help is shorter.
On a phone, the ship button opens a small menu: ride along, cockpit, or show the marker.
Detail is set to auto: sharp screens with time to spare get the finest characters.

0.9.328 Sep 2026The Halo roams

The Halo stays about two minutes at each place and roams round it in slow passes, then hops on.
A slower teleport: the heart powers up, the hull burns away into embers and forms again on arrival.
A new scan: a hologram ring sweeps the body pole to pole and names real features with real numbers.
Pip, the drone, has two eyes and faces that show how it feels, and helps round the ship.
Search finds places by catalogue number, such as M31 or NGC 1976.

0.9.228 Sep 2026A song list

The radio plays a fixed list of songs, the same every time, picked by ear.
Pick any song from the list in settings, under now playing.
Moods instead of styles: mix, calm, beats and groove.
Three new styles: ambient piano, downtempo and soft synthwave.

0.9.128 Sep 2026The Halo's new look

A fine shield line round the hull that flares near strong gravity, following the real escape speed.
A new teleport: the hull burns away cell by cell in an ember wind and forms again.
Pip, a little eye-pod drone, comes out of the belly bay on probe jobs.
A calmer light speed, with no white glare over the ship.

0.9.027 Sep 2026New places, a new atlas

New places: Vesta, Bennu, Mimas with its giant crater, three planets of other stars, Gaia BH3, T Coronae Borealis, the Lagoon Nebula and M13.
The atlas shows every choice at once: sort by kind, distance, size or name, twelve kinds, and "not seen yet".
Solar System distances are measured from the Sun, so they always climb.
Your collection and badges live at the bottom of the atlas, and every badge does something.

0.8.827 Sep 2026A random tour

A random tour picks 12 places from the whole atlas, a new mix each time, places you have not seen first.
Its trips stay smooth, and it deals 12 more at the last stop.
Fixes to a few angles that looked empty on a phone.

0.8.727 Sep 2026Smoother Halo flights

Fixed four mistakes in the Halo's route: sharp turns at light speed, a pause mid-glide and jerky arrivals.

0.8.627 Sep 2026Calmer ASCII

Bright areas use fewer, steadier characters, so they no longer look like confetti.
Brightness rises smoothly instead of in bands.

0.8.526 Sep 2026Say where it goes

A green button beside the name says where it goes: "next stop · Moon ›" or "back to the tour".
The angle arrows sit on the angle line, and every tap counts.
Esc closes whatever is open first.

0.8.426 Sep 2026Home, gestures, free camera

A home button flies back to Earth from anywhere (also H or the logo).
On a phone, a pinch zooms exactly with your fingers and two fingers slide the object on screen.
After you let go of an object, the view keeps moving with it, and a pill points the way back.

0.8.326 Sep 2026Quick wins

The sound button shows in soft red while no music plays.
TRAPPIST-1e is a temperate world with sea and ice, not lava.
Voyager 1 moves along its real path and counts down to one light-day from Earth.

0.8.226 Sep 2026The Halo, redrawn

The Halo follows the owner's concept art: a trident with a needle bow, two crescent arms and a star-heart.
A showcase of the ship: open the site with ?showcase=halo.

0.8.126 Sep 2026Comets and meteors

Hale-Bopp, NEOWISE, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, 3I/ATLAS and 67P on their real orbits, with tails that point away from the Sun.
Shoemaker-Levy 9 hitting Jupiter, the Kreutz sungrazers, the Perseids and the Leonids.
Now and then a comet or meteor zips past on a tour.

0.8.026 Sep 2026The Halo at work

The Halo always flies somewhere: short hops at light speed, long ones by folding space.
Jobs on the way past: scans, a probe, weapons tests, skims, a tractor beam (all made up).

0.7.926 Sep 2026Earth at night

Earth's night side shows the real city lights seen from space.
Weather seen from space: cyclones, thunderstorms with lightning, dust and fire seasons (sped up).

0.7.826 Sep 2026Planets against the Sun

Every planet has an angle from its night side looking back at the Sun.
The Solar System view zooms in until the Sun fills the screen.
Betelgeuse up close: a boiling surface of giant cells.

0.7.725 Sep 2026True order of size

In the Solar System view the Sun is always the biggest and the planets keep their true order of size.
A trip is always one smooth flight.

0.7.625 Sep 2026Music right away

The music starts as soon as the browser allows it.

0.7.525 Sep 202616 new places

JWST icons, strange worlds, wanderers and oddities, and two new tours.
Long trips pass something real on the way.

0.7.425 Sep 2026Ride along

Ride along with the Halo, in the chase view or from its cockpit.
A warm, boiling Sun, and the Pillars of Creation in JWST colours.

0.7.325 Sep 2026Play and pause

Play and pause for the camera; a picked object loops through its angles.
Black hole shadows are pitch black.

0.7.225 Sep 2026Subtle black holes

Black holes are shown by their own physics again: bent light, the photon ring and colour shifts.

0.7.125 Sep 2026Phones

A phone layout: a dock of big buttons, the info as a card and the scale behind a chip.
The interface fades when you leave it alone.

0.7.025 Sep 2026A big update

Nebulae, galaxies, extreme stars and a black hole zoo.
Your own sky tonight, Earth's story, live satellites and launches.
Screensaver, photo mode, today's discovery, a collection log and the radio.

0.6.0Sep 2026Tours

Themed tours with captions, size compare, a time machine and share links.

0.5.0Sep 2026A home of its own

The atlas moves to gcdatlas.vercel.app, with search, settings, the scale ladder and music.

0.1.0Sep 2026The beginning

The ASCII universe: real stars, planets from JPL orbits and a seamless zoom from Earth to the edge of the observable universe.