CosmicLens — James Webb Space Telescope Explorer

Ship #1 Changes requested

@anshitbhattarai on CosmicLens — James Webb Space Telescope Explorer · 21 days ago

CosmicLens is a James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) explorer that can be interactively used to browse 6 actual JWST observations with real-time NASA images pulled from the NASA's Image Library API, or to view real instrument temperatures and mission statistics on the telescope, or to map every observation by celestial coordinates with a clickable map indicating its details in-line. The most challenging part was getting real NASA images had to go through hotlink blocks to proxy route, and even broken urls until it hit NASA's API directly through curl to find the correct image IDs. Worst of all was the fact that we rejected all the placeholders, and all of the telemetry data reported here is real as well: running at 1.5 million km away from Earth at L2, with MIRI running at -128°C. To test it, click on any observation card in Explore to view a live NASA image from that card, and click any dot on the Sky Map to see details appear in-line. No login needed.

3 devlogs
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@anshitbhattarai on CosmicLens — James Webb Space Telescope Explorer · 21 days ago

3h 6m 40s logged

Day 2 — June 11, 2026
Big day. Built the rest of the app and fought NASA’s APIs for most of it.
Built ExploreDetail right panel with empty state, full observation detail view with image loading, data grid showing coordinates and program info, and a direct link to the ESA Webb Portal.
Built TelemetryTab showing real JWST instrument temperatures with color-coded bars, telescope status, orbit info, and mission statistics.
Built SkyMapTab an interactive celestial coordinate map with all 6 observations plotted by RA/Dec position. Clickable dots with hover tooltips. Clicking a dot shows an inline detail card below the map with coordinates, distance, program info. Color-coded by object type with a legend.
What I learned: NASA’s Image Library API item.links array has the direct URL don’t fetch the manifest. Not all Webb images are in NASA’s public library. WASP-96b has no photo, only spectrum data. stsci-opo.org blocks hotlinking. Rotating AI providers when rate limited is a real skill.

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@anshitbhattarai on CosmicLens — James Webb Space Telescope Explorer · 22 days ago

1h 0m logged

CosmicLens — Dev Log #2
Date: June 10, 2026

What Got Built Today

Completed

Animated starfield background
Tab navigation
Explore tab left panel with:
- Live search filtering
- Object type filter pills (Nebula/Galaxy/Exoplanet etc)
- Instrument filter pills (NIRCam/MIRI/NIRISS)
- 6 mock JWST observation cards with color-coded
  type badges
- Scrollable card list

In Progress