Simulate a solar system

This program simulates a solar system that you can modify as you wish. It is developed in the Rethfeld group at RPTU, Kaiserslautern, Germany by Markus Uehlein and Tobias Held.
It designed for an 1-1.5h workshop for students and used at "Tag der Physik". As physical basics Newton's law of gravitation and Kepler's laws are helpful.
The program itself and the GUI are written in english, everything else in german.

Installation

Requirements

The program is written in C++ and therefore requires gcc and Qt.
It is testet with gcc version 8, 10 and 12.2.0 and Qt version 5.9, 5.9, 5.12. and 5.15.8. Old Qt versions are available here.

Getting the requirements on "Windows"

The most successful way to install the requirements is to install the Linux subsystem for Windows:

• Open the powershell and run wsl --install. Restart your PC after installation.
• Install the Debian app from the Windows store.
• Open the Debian app and generate a user. Run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade.
• Run sudo apt install build-essential g++ qtbase5-dev qt5-qmake qtbase5-dev-tools.

Getting started

• clone repository and switch to the directory
• run qmake
• run make
• start program with ./bin/keplerplusplus

Object pictures

Due to copyright issues there is only a sun and a default planet image uploaded to github. You can easily use more pictures if you add them to the icons directory. All .png files can be shown in the GUI. Just name the object after the file. Underscores and numbers will be ignored. E.g.: An Object with name Sun_2 will show the picture of icons/Sun.png if it exists. If not, the default image is shown.

Licence

• The program is subject to the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
• All image files are licensed under creative common (links below).
• The program uses a modified version of QCustomPlot, QScienceSpinBox and Ubuntu.qss.

Image links

• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bringer_of_War_Planet.png
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sun_in_February_%28transparent%29.png
• https://www.rawpixel.com/image/4026737/photo-image-background-aesthetic-star
• https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/186407/arrow_up_icon
• https://www.iconfinder.com/icons/186411/arrow_down_icon