Game developer Christopher Albeluhn found himself unemployed, so he started to work on a model of Earth in a video game engine to add to his portfolio. He finished that, and thought, hey, might as well keep on going. He eventually created the Solar System.
Before i knew it, i had all 8 planets (I am SO sorry Pluto), the sun and the Asteroid belt. They all had correct rotations, orbits, locations and speeds; their moons, information regarding the planets and their facts. All of these were fine, but i wanted something more, so i added in the constellations, all 88 of them.
Still though, this was portfolio work — until a link to the video went up on reddit. With some momentum, Albeluhn hopes to turn his side project into a full-fledged application. Fingers crossed for completion.
This has been done before, and includes most of the known universe:
http://www.shatters.net/celestia
This is incredibly misleading with respect to scale. It makes the earth look bigger than the sun and makes the atmosphere look 2000 miles deep. Given how screwed up most peoples sense of celestial scale already is, it seems a pity to reinforce the errors.