Navigating the 3D Map
Last updated: August 21, 2026
The Atlas is a single-page application, and everything happens inside one canvas: selecting a sphere, descending into a sector, entering a system, approaching a planet. There is no page navigation behind it, which has a few practical consequences worth knowing before you assume something is broken. The browser's back button does not move you up a level in the way it would on a conventional site, and a URL copied from the address bar does not encode where you currently are.
Moving with intent
Descend deliberately: sphere, sector, system, planet. It is easy to lose orientation in a 3D scene, and the fastest recovery is usually to go back up a level rather than to hunt sideways at the depth you are at. Give the scene a moment when entering a new level — loading a level is work, and an unresponsive instant is not a failure.
What you cannot do
You cannot bookmark a location, share a direct link to a body, or cite a place inside the Atlas. That is not an oversight; it is what a single canvas means. When you need a stable reference to somewhere, the Codex's celestial records are addressable pages and are the correct citation.
Input
The experience assumes pointer input and a reasonably sized viewport. Small screens and touch input will work to varying degrees, but a 3D planetarium is not primarily a phone experience.
Explore first, read second. The Atlas is far better as a way of forming questions than as a way of answering them — take the names you noticed to the Codex afterwards.
Official source
Canonical source for this subject: the Celestial Atlas. Checked 21 August 2026 — where this guide and the live service disagree, the service is right.
Related reading
- Spheres, Sectors, Systems and Planets — The four levels of Xdripian space and what each one contains.
- WebGL, Accessibility and Troubleshooting — Getting the planetarium to run, and what to do when it cannot.
- Celestial Atlas Guide — The interactive 3D planetarium of the Universe and what it is built to do.