100,000 stars

WOW, that is amazing. I'm always blown away by stuff like this, where you can actually get a sense of how small we all are and how distant even the closest neighbor stars are.<p>I just close my eyes for a minute and think (or try to), what would it be like for those people that are finally able to reach, say, Vega (I know it's not the closest). Sure, this is not a big deal in sci-fi, but for reality, it's pretty mind blowing. This is 100% why I seriously want to live for a few hundred years: to have an opportunity to see the first time we actually go to the nearest star.<p>In the meantime, I guess this will have to suffice.<p>I also love this image that is not interactive like this, but still mind blowing: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earths_Location_in_the_Universe_(JPEG).jpg" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Earths_Location_in_the_Uni...</a>

This is without a doubt one of the coolest and most beautiful webgl experiments I have seen in the last few years, it actually struck a real chord with me - music, lighting, effects, the zoom and the sheer beauty of it.<p>For those people unlucky enough to not be able to load this app (it took me quite a while) here is a particularly fantastic image I took (without asking or any right to, of course) - <a href="http://shanearmstrong.co.uk/content/cdn/the_beauty_of_the_cosmos.png" rel="nofollow">http://shanearmstrong.co.uk/content/cdn/the_beauty_of_the_co...</a> - I apologize for any slow load times.

<i>Warning: Scientific accuracy is not guaranteed. Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation.</i>

This is REALLY COOL!<p>Could someone explain how this is built or give an overview of how it works? In the 'about' page <a href="http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/100000-stars/" rel="nofollow">http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/100000-stars/</a> it says WebGL and CSS3D, but I'm wondering how they fit together and what does what.<p>Is there a better way to view the source than just 'view source' in chrome?<p>I know a number of programming languages and I'd like to learn more about how this project works. [Saw the link to book on graphic programming in other comments below <a href="http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.arcsynthesis.org/gltut/index.html</a>, but how to "take apart and study" this project? ] Kudos to anyone who can point me in the right direction. Thanks!

Here is a great Youtube video showing the sizes of objects starting with the moon and working its way up to the largest known star. (Our Sun is a rounding error at that point!) <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q</a> - if youtube refuses to play because of audio try <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKTu6B4Rgek" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKTu6B4Rgek</a><p>Here is another one showing an animation of asteroids discovered in our solar system from 1980 to 2011. It starts off pretty tame, and by the end gets scary! <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUSP23cmAE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONUSP23cmAE</a>

Amusingly for a "Chrome Experiment" it refuses to run on my chrome (Chrome 23 on Fedora 17 with Ivy Bridge graphics).<p>Firefox on the same machine works flawlessly.

For those of you interested in the topic, the best publicly available database I've found is <a href="http://www.astronexus.com/node/34" rel="nofollow">http://www.astronexus.com/node/34</a>, and The Book for astronomical computation is Astronomical Algorithms, by Jean Meeus, <a href="http://www.willbell.com/math/mc1.HTM" rel="nofollow">http://www.willbell.com/math/mc1.HTM</a><p>(Shameless plug: I used both to implement the Common Lisp sky renderization engine for my startup, <a href="http://greaterskies.com" rel="nofollow">http://greaterskies.com</a>, that makes pretty personalized posters out of thousands of stars)

It's like the galaxy map in Frontier Elite II was, in my imagination.

On my MBP scrolling is backwards (swipe up moves closer), and mouse motion controls the camera offset angle. It's easy to write the code this way, but awkward and surprising during use. It's better to pretend that the hand manipulates the model, with a swipe up pushing it away and a swipe right turning the model counterclockwise around the vertical axis of the view.

Absolutely amazing. By the way, it also works on Firefox. (Though performance isn't... <i>stellar</i>)

This is incredible, and with all the positional, magnitude, and spectral information publicly available, anyone could do it.<p>I would really love to see a search box that would allow me to jump to a specific star.

MBP Chrome here, I see maybe 50 closest stars. When I zoom out, the stars in galaxy are just transparent squares. Doesn't look like <a href="http://shanearmstrong.co.uk/content/cdn/the_beauty_of_the_cosmos.png" rel="nofollow">http://shanearmstrong.co.uk/content/cdn/the_beauty_of_the_co...</a> or <a href="http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/100000-stars/img/ahZzfmNocm9tZXhwZXJpbWVudHMtaHJkchgLEg9FeHBlcmltZW50SW1hZ2UY27DmBQw/large" rel="nofollow">http://www.chromeexperiments.com/detail/100000-stars/img/ahZ...</a>

67:2 [He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving -<p>67:3 [And] who created seven heavens in layers. You do not see in the creation of the Most Merciful any inconsistency. So return [your] vision [to the sky]; do you see any breaks?<p>67:4 Then return [your] vision twice again. [Your] vision will return to you humbled while it is fatigued.

Nothing interesting to add except it was an enjoyable way to start the day, thanks. Always good to have something remind you how insignificant you are! The music was great too<p>edit: loaded it in chrome instead, even better (should have been obvious given it's located on chromeexperiments.com)

I need to learn 3D graphics for some of my scientific projects. Specifically, I want to rotate clouds of points just as shown here. I have no idea where to start with doing this, however. Can somebody point me to a good tutorial or other resource in 3D graphics?

I wonder if there are clusters where distance between neighbouring stars are much less than with Sun and Proxima Centauri. Would these locations provide better opportunities for space faring civilizations to reach other star systems?

Eventually crashed Safari on my rMBP, but this seems to be a trend, so possibly Safari's fault (and would explain why WebGL is not enabled by default).<p>In any case, great visualisation. Would be a perfect use for a 3D monitor.

As cool as this is, if you have an iPad check out Star Walk. It's really really cool, and if you hold your iPad up to the sky it'd show you what the sky would look like if there isn't any pollutions.

Awesome! The only issue is that the visualization makes it look like we are in a cluster of stars. That is not correct. We're part of the diffuse field star population in the Milky Way.

I love the way they made the stars - from close a sun actually looks like a pile of hot, glowing, boiling gas, and not like cold orange sphere you can see pretty much everywhere else.

If your interested in simulating the physics of the universe checkout Universe Sandbox <a href="http://universesandbox.com/" rel="nofollow">http://universesandbox.com/</a>

Was I the only one really hoping for "Reticulating Splines"?

I am on rMBP and it hardlocked Chrome after I navigated towards the sun and clicked the information button about the sun. Worked fine until then, really cool.

OMG, someone pinch me, nexus 10 was born for this :)

Wow, this is great. Reminds me of Mass Effect and its presentation of planets and their descriptions. At least this stuff is real! :)

Small typo: should be "farthest man-made object" instead of "furthest." Otherwise, awesome job.

Beautiful. Someone needs to make a turn-based strategy game out of this visualization.

This is amazing. Now to figure out how to make this my desktop background...

that is very cool. How was the glow crated using CSS3 for the Sun?

Aaaaaaaaaand chrome mobile fails once again. What's the point of chrome mobile if it's never updated? The stock aosp browser has seen more updates than Google's own browser. The only feature of this god damn browser is idiocy. /rage

wow, awesome visualization.<p>I always wondered how scientist determine the position of earth in our galaxy and the center of the galaxy. can somebody throw some light on this ???

This is what EVE Online's map ought to look like. :)<p>Works fine in Safari.

a. this is so beautiful and well done... what we've come to expect of Chrome Experiments.<p>b. If you haven't already, Toggle the spectral index... so sick

That is incredible, wasn't expecting much.

What was this optimized with? Closure?

It's a small world after all.

slow as hell while loading up but in the end worth it

"There's a lot of space out there to get lost in."

Thumbs up!!!!

I have my first child coming in a couple weeks and this is the type of stuff that I'm going to love showing she or he.<p>Awesome

Who made that music? And do they make more from where that came from?

Unfortunately, it looks wonky as hell on Chrome for Mac.<p>Edit: I'm sorry for my misleading and value-free comment. Allow me to clarify: THIS EXPERIMENT LOOKS LIKE HOT BROKEN GARBAGE ON CHROME FOR MAC, A FACT WHICH MAY BE OF INTEREST TO PERHAPS HALF OF THE HACKER NEWS READERSHIP WHO WILL MOST LIKELY EXPERIENCE THE SAME VISUAL CORRUPTION AT VARIOUS VIEW LEVELS. SOME MAY VIEW THIS AS UNFORTUNATE, AS THE INTENDED EXPERIENCE IS A WORTHY ONE THAT EXERCISES A NUMBER OF CUTTING EDGE WEB PRESENTATION TECHNIQUES THAT ARE LIKELY TO GAIN SIGNIFICANT TRACTION IN THE NEAR FUTURE.