3d Orbits using go.Scattergeo?

[Sydra]

Hi everyone, I need help visualizing a 3d orbit using go.Scattergeo. I’m using plotly in python to visualize data from a satellite orbit analysis. Using go.Scattergeo to show 2d ground tracks is straight forward, and showing a ground track on a 3d globe is easy too:

However, I could not figure out how to show a line above a globe, thus getting a true 3d view of the orbit like so:

Is this possible, or do I need to cook my own starting with a 3d scatter plot where I add my own Earth?
Thanks!

[Xionbox]

Hi there,

Have you figured out how to plot this? I’m very interested in a similar plot.

Thanks

[empet]

@Xionbox

Scattergeo is a 2d plot, and you cannot add orbits to create the impression of 3d.
Instead you can do it with a bit of code, plotting the sphere (globe) as a Plotly surface on which you map the continent boundaries (from a shapefile from example), and set the surfacecolor as representing some data across the globe. To the figure representing the globe you can add a new trace of type Scatter3d for orbits. For the first part see this Jupyter notebook: https://chart-studio.plotly.com/~empet/14813/.

[Sydra]

Thanks for the suggestion! It’s been a while since the question came up, and we’ve settled on using the FOSS CesiumJS library for 3d visualization. We had to string a couple of libraries together to convert between formats, but it came out pretty good :).