The live globe: coverage, trails, a camera button and some satellites
Earlier today we put the whole network on a 3D globe. A few things were left for a second pass, and they are in now.
Coverage
A new Coverage button paints the areas our receivers have heard over the last 30 days: blue squares for aircraft, teal for ships. It is the same grid as the flat aircraft coverage map and ships coverage map, now wrapped around the planet. Brighter squares had more traffic. It is a wash rather than a fill, so the live aircraft and the coastlines stay readable on top of it. With it on you can see the shape of the network at a glance: a large block over Europe, smaller patches wherever a single volunteer has an antenna.
Trails and stations
Pick an aircraft and the globe draws the path it flew over the last few minutes, the same trail the flat live map shows. Pick a station and the camera turns and zooms to it, with a link to that station's own page underneath.
Save image
The Save image button in the corner saves what you are looking at as a PNG, with a strip along the bottom that carries the counts, the time in UTC and the address of the page. The picture is drawn in your browser from the globe you have on screen, so rotate and zoom it to the view you want first.
The satellites
The last button is Starlink. Switch it on and every Starlink satellite currently in orbit, a little over ten thousand of them, appears as a grey dot in its place right now, and they move. Their positions come from the public orbital elements that CelesTrak publishes; our server picks those up every six hours and your browser works out where each satellite is once a second. Tap one and you get its name and height.
To be clear, the Skydex network does not hear satellites. Our receivers listen to aircraft and ships. This layer is there because it is fun to see how crowded low orbit has become, and the page says so under the buttons. It is off until you turn it on, and the extra code it needs only loads when you do.
Share the view you are looking at
The address bar now follows the globe. It records where the camera is pointing and how high it is, which layers are on, the Earth style, altitude colouring and whether the Roadster view is open. Copy the link, or press Share above the globe, and the person who opens it gets the same picture: the same spot on the planet, from the same height, with the same layers. Opening a shared link doesn't overwrite your own saved choices. They come back the next time you open the plain page.
You can also share one thing on the globe. Click a receiver, an aircraft, a ship or a satellite, and the panel under the globe now has a Share button. The link opens the globe on the same view with that object already selected, so you can send someone your own station without sending them to a separate page. If the aircraft has landed or the ship has left our coverage by the time they open it, they get the view without the selection. Signed in, there is a Referral link box next to the button: with it ticked, the link carries your invite code, and a friend who signs up through it counts as your invite.
Where it is
The globe lives under Network at the top of every page. If you run a receiver and want your area to light up in the coverage layer, connect it here.