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CurveSimulator: A Star System and Light Curve Simulator

CurveSimulator generates a video of the movements and eclipses of celestial bodies and the resulting light curve.

This is especially useful for star systems that contain exoplanets detected using the transit method. The video simultanously displays a view of the star system from the top and from the side alongside the light curve of the system's total luminosity over time.

It takes just 2 lines of python code to produce the video.

In a configuration file, specify the physical properties of the stars and planets in your system. Also, provide some parameters of the video you want to make. Learn [Orbital Elements](how the orbital elements influence the orbits shown in the video).

CurveSimulator is fast and the videos use little disk space. A video takes about the same time to produce as its playing time and uses less than 0.5 MB disc space per minute.

For questions and comments open an issue on GitHub.

Find out more about how CurveSimulator works.

Getting started

1. Install the package, for example with "pip install curvesimulator".

2. CurveSimulator uses ffmpeg to convert the data into a video. Find and download an executable version of ffmpeg via ffmpeg.org. Extract the downloaded zip file and (on Windows) add "yourdriveandpath\FFmpeg\bin" to the environment variable PATH.

3. Create a Python script with this code.

4. Download this example config file to the directory containing your Python script.

5. Run your script. If all went well, you have just generated your first video with CurveSimulator. If not, contact me.