1.16.1

• Embedded views (guide pages, classroom dashboards) reload by themselves when newer data are published, once nobody has touched them for 3 minutes; the camera, the selection and the visitor's place are kept.

1.16.0: guide pages

Guide pages

43 pages in English and French, each answering one common search ("Where is the ISS?", "How far is Voyager 1?", "Moon phase today", "Spacecraft orbiting Mars", "Where are the dwarf planets?"…). Hubs at https://perigee.info/en/ and https://perigee.info/fr/.

• Live answers, cards and tables computed in the browser, with the 3D view embedded, a ground-track map with the night side, and the data sources, age and typical accuracy.
• Dashboard mode for classroom screens: full screen, large type, screen kept awake, reloads itself when the site is updated.
• "My location" on the satellite and sky pages: upcoming passes over you, or tonight's sky, and a "You" marker in the 3D view. The location is rounded to about 1 km, stays in your browser and is never sent.
• A page listing every data source and software credit.

App

• Embedded views get a Recenter button that returns to the starting view.
• Moon and Mars views: sites=crewed shows only the crewed (Apollo) landing sites.
• Launch sites and other surface markers are drawn above the Earth's cloud layer again.
• Em dashes removed from the interface texts.

perigee-mcp 1.9.3

• perigee_describe_view describes sites=crewed.

Perigee 1.15.1

→ Open Perigee

Fixed

• Earth view, past dates: opening a link dated more than a day back could draw two sets of satellites at once. If the archived elements of that date failed to load, the view now tries again a minute later instead of giving up.
• Favorites: opening a favorite that follows an object, while already following another one, now follows the favorite's object. Saving a view that is already one of the examples says so instead of adding a second row.
• Comets: the list sorted by estimated magnitude now follows the shown date, so it stays right when you jump in time or speed up the clock.
• Links: a link naming an active mission in show= is no longer described as drawing an inactive one.

Maintenance

• Asteroids and dwarf planets are fetched again from JPL Horizons if their last fetch date cannot be read.
• The data files of comets and asteroids removed from the catalogue are deleted.

AI assistants: perigee-mcp 1.9.1 brings the perigee_describe_view fix.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.15.0

→ Open Perigee

Added

• Dwarf planet candidates in the solar system view. Tick Show the dwarf planet candidates to draw and list, largest first:
  • Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus and Sedna, the large bodies beyond Neptune that planetologists usually count as dwarf planets;
  • 2026 ED138, the first dwarf planet candidate found by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, announced on 27 October 2026.
  • Positions come from JPL Horizons. The five dwarf planets recognised by the IAU (Pluto, Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, Eris) stay with the planets.
• A dwarf planet's info panel now says:
  • whether the IAU recognises it;
  • its size and how it was measured: by a spacecraft, stellar occultations, its heat glow, or its brightness only (ED138: about 1,000 km, between 600 and 1,500 km);
  • its discovery and its moons (Dysnomia, Hiʻiaka and Namaka, MK2, Weywot, Vanth, Xiangliu).
• Images: Hubble images of Gonggong, Quaoar, Orcus and Sedna, and Rubin's discovery images of 2026 ED138. These bodies were never imaged in detail, so the panel shows these images rather than a plain sphere.
• Glossary: a "dwarf planet" entry.
• Links: candidates=1 draws them, sel=quaoar or sel=2026-ed138 selects one.

Changed

• The solar panel's boxes now come in this order: dwarf planet candidates, comets, asteroids, stars within 20 light-years, bright stars.
• Telescope views (ESO VLT images of the large asteroids, Hubble and Gemini images of two comets) are labelled "Telescope image" instead of "Image taken by the spacecraft".

Maintenance

• The dwarf planets are refreshed from JPL Horizons once a week, like the asteroids.

AI assistants: perigee-mcp 1.9.0 finds the dwarf planets and candidates by name (eris, quaoar, 2026-ed138); perigee_object gives their size, how it was measured, discovery and moons, and perigee_describe_view reads candidates=1.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.14.0

→ Open Perigee

Added

• Favorites. The star button in the top bar (Favorites in the phone menu) opens a list of views to jump to:
  • four examples in real time: the International Space Station followed, Apollo 11's landing site, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter followed and Voyager 1 followed;
  • Add the current view saves what is on screen: view, date (or real time), speed, selected object, filters and following;
  • your saved views, each named after its object, with its view, date and whether it is followed.
• Picking a favorite switches to its view and date and glides to the object. Each entry is also a regular link, so it can be opened in a new tab.
• Saved favorites stay in your browser, up to 50; delete one, or clear them all, after a confirmation. A web page cannot write to the browser's own bookmarks, so they are not those. The privacy pages say so.

Maintenance

• npm run data:pull also downloads the 30-day archives, so past dates show the archived positions locally as on the site.
• README screenshots retaken with the new button.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.13.0

→ Open Perigee

Added

• Notable asteroids in the solar system view. Tick Show the notable asteroids to draw and list 30 asteroids from Wikipedia's list of exceptional asteroids, sorted by size:
  • the largest, over 250 km across: Vesta, Pallas, Hygiea, Interamnia, Europa, Davida, Sylvia, Eunomia, Euphrosyne, Cybele, Hektor, Juno, Patientia and Camilla (Ceres stays among the dwarf planets);
  • the spacecraft targets: Lutetia, Ida, Mathilde, Eros, Gaspra, Šteins, Toutatis, Annefrank, Braille, Itokawa, Ryugu, Bennu, Didymos, Dinkinesh, Donaldjohanson and Torifune.
• Positions come from JPL Horizons. Each asteroid shows its orbit.
• The info panel gives:
  • the group (main belt, Mars-crosser, near-Earth, Jupiter trojan), spectral type, size and measured dimensions, rotation period;
  • the discovery, moons (Dactyl, Remus and Romulus, Dimorphos…), and the spacecraft that visited it;
  • the semi-major axis, perihelion, eccentricity, inclination and period, the distances to the Sun and the Earth, and an estimated magnitude;
  • student notes in English and French.
• Images:
  • Vesta, Bennu, Eros and Itokawa have NASA 3D models, shown in the panel and in place of the marker up close, turning at their rotation period.
  • 20 others come with a freely licensed image, such as ESO's VLT views of the large ones and spacecraft views of the visited ones.
• Links: asteroids=1 draws them, sel=asteroid:<id> selects one.

Fixed

• The info panel starts at the top when another object is selected, instead of keeping the previous scroll position.
• While a new photo loads, the panel shows "Loading…" instead of the previous object's photo.
• Distances in astronomical units read "ua" in French.

Maintenance

• The daily JPL Horizons run also fetches the asteroids, once a week each (they move very regularly).
• The weekly audit flags an asteroid whose data are more than 10 days old.
• npm run data:pull also downloads the asteroid ephemerides.

AI assistants: perigee-mcp 1.8.0 knows the asteroids (asteroid:<id> in perigee_find, perigee_object, perigee_state, perigee_distance; perigee_describe_view reads asteroids=1).

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.12.1

→ Open Perigee

Changed

• The README describes the recent additions: comets (with a new screenshot of Comet Encke near perihelion and its illustrative tails), the inactive spacecraft section, the landing and impact sites of Mercury, Venus and Titan, the Titan and Venus map switch, the 30 days of past data and the new link parameters (comets=1, sel=comet:<id>, sites=1, show=).

Fixed

• npm run data:pull (development) now downloads the moon and comet ephemerides too; it kept stale local copies before. The website was not affected.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.12.0

→ Open Perigee

Added

• Comets in the solar system view. Tick Show the comets to draw and list 20 comets: famous ones (Halley, Encke, Tempel 1, Pons-Brooks, Olbers, 29P, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, Hartley 2, Hale-Bopp, Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) and current telescope targets (10P/Tempel 2, 88P/Howell, 161P/Hartley-IRAS, 169P/NEAT, 220P/McNaught, Bernardinelli-Bernstein, Bok, two ATLAS comets, Leonard).
• Positions come from JPL Horizons, which follows each comet with the planets' pull; the list is sorted by estimated brightness.
• Each comet shows its orbit (open orbits included) and illustrative ion and dust tails that point away from the Sun and grow near it.
• The info panel gives the designation, discovery, nucleus size, perihelion distance, eccentricity, inclination, period, last and next perihelion, distances to the Sun and the Earth, an estimated magnitude (from Horizons' brightness law: comets often stray from it) and student notes in English and French. 15 comets come with a freely licensed photo, such as 67P seen by Rosetta.
• Links: comets=1 draws them, sel=comet:<id> selects one.

Maintenance

• The daily JPL Horizons run also fetches the comets (one request each).
• The weekly audit suggests comets nearing perihelion from JPL's small-body database, for the maintenance agent to add.

AI assistants: perigee-mcp 1.7.0 knows the comets (comet:<id> in perigee_find, perigee_object, perigee_state, perigee_distance; perigee_describe_view reads comets=1).

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.11.0

→ Open Perigee

Added

• Inactive spacecraft. The solar system view now lists retired probes in their own section after the active ones (the Moon and Mars views split their missions the same way). Inactive ones are hidden by default, each section has its own Show all / Hide all buttons, and selecting a probe draws it again.
• Seven retired probes with a position, from the trajectories JPL Horizons still predicts for them: Pioneer 10 and 11, Ulysses, Spitzer, Kepler, Planck and Herschel (plus Gaia). The panel says the position is a prediction, not a measurement.
• Famous probes listed without a position (their public ephemerides have ended): Mariner 2 and 10, Helios 1 and 2, Galileo, NEAR Shoemaker, Cassini, Deep Space 1, Stardust, WMAP, Hayabusa, Rosetta, Deep Impact/EPOXI, Dawn and Akatsuki, with DART.
• Each new probe has its goals, history and sources in English and French, and a NASA 3D model (Pioneer, Kepler, Spitzer, Galileo, Cassini, Rosetta, Dawn, NEAR, Stardust, Deep Impact, WMAP, Deep Space 1) or a freely licensed image; Planck and Herschel link to ESA's SciFleet models.

Changed

• On phones, dragging on the info panel's 3D preview now scrolls the panel instead of turning the model.
• Links keep only what differs from the defaults: hide= for hidden active missions, show= for inactive ones drawn. Older links still work.

AI assistants: perigee-mcp 1.6.0 carries the new catalogue, and perigee_describe_view reads the new show= parameter.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.

Perigee 1.10.2

→ Open Perigee

Changed

• perigee-mcp 1.5.2 installs nothing else. The MCP server now bundles its dependencies (MCP SDK, astronomy-engine, satellite.js, zod) into a single file, keeping only the SDK parts the stdio server uses. Installing it no longer pulls ~98 packages, among them the SDK's HTTP transports and example servers (express, hono, cross-spawn, ajv) that package scanners flagged for shell access, eval and an example server's flaws, though Perigee never ran them.
• The SDK's JSON Schema validator (ajv, used only for elicitation, which Perigee never sends) is replaced by a stub, so no code is generated at run time.
• The package ships dist/THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md with the licence of every bundled package.

No change to the tools, their answers or the website.

Educational use only — not intended for navigation or conjunction assessment.