Hidden in Starlight
vidhyan podelly
A physics-based 3-body simulation that reveals a hidden circumbinary planet through synthetic photometry and radial-velocity observations.
What it does
Hidden in Starlight is an interactive astrophysics visualization and inverse-problem demonstration. It simulates a binary star system with a hidden circumbinary planet using coupled Newtonian N-body dynamics, then generates synthetic photometric and radial-velocity observations from a fixed distant observer.
The application lets users explore the system in 3D, examine the resulting light curve and radial velocities, search for periodic signals, and recover the hidden planet's orbital parameters from the simulated observations.
The project also includes an isolated relativistic-inspired black-hole visualization showing an animated compact-object/accretion-disk environment with extended plasma and outflows.
The core idea is to demonstrate how an unseen object can be inferred from its measurable effects on the system rather than simply displaying the planet directly.