Earth-Sun-Moon Simulator

Ever wondered what really causes the seasons, why solar eclipses happen, and what all of it looks like from space?

ESM-Simulator is an interactive, real-time Earth–Sun–Moon simulator for Blender built for learning and experimentation. This educational simulation enables you to follow Moon's orbit around the earth, experience the moon phases from many different points of view. See Moon's shadow on Earth, creating a local Solar Eclipse.

You may jump to a certain location on earth (either choose a pre-set like USA, Germany, China, North Pole.. or set Longitude and Latitude) and, from this POV, follow Sun's or Moon's path across the sky. This will give you a first-row view of the next Solar Eclipse! With sunrise, the blue sky will blend in. After sunset, the starry night sky will appear. The blue sky will slow down the simulation, but looks very beautiful in your rendering!

View our Blue Marble from Moon's surface or activate the visual orbits to understand Earth's tilt, orbit around the sun and Moon's tilted orbit around Earth. Increase or decrease the relative distances of the Celestials for a better overview or a (slightly) more realistic distance.

You can keyframe many of the parameters, e.g. create a speed ramp for the simulation.

And, last but not least, bake everything, offset-animate the camera for true cinematic views and render everything with the highest settings.

Explore the Earth–Moon system in motion, watch the orbits unfold, and see how Earth’s axial tilt creates the seasons—down to the extreme daylight of the polar circle, where “summer” menas, the Sun will never set.

Use the included camera presets to view the system from cinematic, easy-to-understand angles.

See, how Earth’s axis is tilted towards the sun in summer? Long days on Northern Hemisphere, short days in the south!

Track a specific place on Earth by moving the large red arrow and experience the sky from that exact location.

Jump to the next solar eclipse and observe it both from space and from the ground. And when night falls, enjoy the atmosphere as city lights glow across the dark side of the planet.

In April 2026 I’ve added the „Artemis 2“ feature which simulates the flight of NASA’s Artemis 2 mission around the moon.
This is rather experimental than realistic and works best if you set your season start to Autumn or set start to around April with the standard settings.
Recommended initial settings are in the text box, but you are welcome to experiment with all settings!
The rocket will always try to circle the earth, aim for moon, orbit the moon and return back to earth. Depending on positions of earth and moon, the orbits may look bumpy. With the sliders, you can try to smooth the flight path.
After baking, the rocket will fly smoothly along the path!

Whether you’re creating a promo, teaching astronomy, or just curious, ESM-Simulator makes complex celestial mechanics intuitive—and fun to explore.