Last month Google launched an experimental interactive web app called 100,00 stars. It allows you to visualize the exact location of stars throughout the galaxy. It is built upon data collected from NASA, ESA, and other sources. It’s pretty neat and is meant to be used inside of Google chrome. It is also pretty processor intensive for a webapp and they recommend that you close other programs when using the site. You can also click on 87 different stars and learn more about them.
It is a pretty incredible application when you think about it, it is giving a visual representation to this immense amount of astronomical data that is available about our milky way galaxy. It’s also pretty incredible that Google employees can build these incredible visualizations based on these massive data sets. And then they make these visualizations available to the public for free. It is pretty mind blowing and incredibly awesome that Google does things like this. Just imagine that they send a satellite into space and Google makes Google Solar System, an extension of Google Earth.
I would have to agree. I think I will download this app. However I still think that nothing beats being in a planetarium.