Interactive 3D Earth globe

Yes. The tool computes the subsolar point — the spot where the Sun is directly overhead — from the current UTC time using the standard NOAA solar equations (solar declination and the equation of time). The globe is lit from that direction, so the terminator, the twilight zones and the polar day or night all match reality to within a fraction of a degree.

Turn on the ISS layer and the globe shows the International Space Station’s current position, its ground track and the area it can see, refreshed every few seconds from a public tracking feed, with its altitude and speed. If the feed is briefly unavailable the rest of the globe keeps working.

Yes. Use the time controls to scrub through the day, or jump straight to the March and September equinoxes or the June and December solstices. The lit hemisphere tilts exactly as it does in the real world, because the Sun’s position is driven by its true declination across the year. The analemma layer even traces the Sun’s yearly figure-eight.

The Earth textures come from NASA imagery (Blue Marble daytime, Black Marble night lights) via the Three.js project; country borders are from Natural Earth; city data is from GeoNames; live layers come from public ISS and USGS earthquake feeds. Full credits are listed on the page.

Yes. The Share button copies a link that encodes the camera angle, zoom, active layers and time, so anyone who opens it sees exactly the same view. You can also save the current globe as a PNG image with the Photo button.