I happened to be surfing through various random sites today when I came across this site that’s actually been created as an experiment by some of the bods over at Google.
Called “100,000 Stars“, it’s an interactive visualization of the stellar neighborhood created for the Google Chrome web browser – don’t worry it works just as well in FireFox but it doesn’t seem to run in Internet Explorer.
100,000 Stars experiment – click image to launch it in your browser (not Internet Explorer)
The visualization shows the real location of over 100,000 nearby stars. Zooming in reveals 87 major named stars and our solar system. The galaxy view is an artist’s rendition.
There’s a tour you can take that will zoom in and show you various astronomy facts that you should find enlighting!
If you’re interested in programming or would just like to know how the visualization was put together, check out the Making 100,000 Stars page.
Filed under: Deep Space
