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Visualizing 100,000 Stars In Chrome
An anonymous reader writes "Google has rolled out a new web experiment for Chrome. This one is a visualization of the locations of over 100,000 nearby stars. It pulls data from astrometric databases and catalogs to show accurate relative locations of the stars. You can zoom and pan around the cluster, zoom all the way in to the solar system, or zoom all the way out to see how even this huge number of stars is dwarfed by the rest of the Milky Way. It also has data on a number individual stars in our stellar neighborhood. This web app works best in Chrome (much like their previous one, Jam With Chrome), but I was able to try it in Firefox as well."
This story isn't about Australia and there doesn't appear to be an Aussie connection?
Slashdot is really going to the dogs, when it ought to be about dingoes.
...with a headline like that.
But I'm always wondering... As much as google has become to so many people, how long before they become a has been company like a certain large California based Internet portal, or like altavista, or even like a certain large OS maker who hasn't done anything decent in years? I'm hesitant to put my eggs in the google basket.
I played around with it a bit, but it seems to be somewhat lacking compared to Celestia, which does many of the same things and more. A couple gripes: Sirius was listed as Alpha Cassiopeiae, though it's Bayer designation is Alpha Canis Majoris. Also, it seems to be lacking nearly all of the red dwarfs that make up the majority of the solar neighborhood. Seriously? No Wolf 359?
I wonder how many lightyears that covers?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And now Elite:Dangerous is gonna do it again - check the Kickstarter campaign (bland fan promo) at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1461411552/elite-dangerous
You have never existed. And are now a new tiberium seed.
The HYG Database they linked to is enough stars; I used it at work to create a realistic star map for a geospatial visualization by mapping their spherical coordinates to a unit sphere and drawing in 3D (OpenGL) and using their magnitude and temperature for color/brightness.
The HYG Database is all the visible-to-the-naked-eye stars within 20 parsecs; when you say, "that's not that many stars" well, you can't see much more than that anyway so it's a good start.
-SaNo
I could google, but I'd rather trust a stranger's appraisal.
Is webgl relatively secure, relatively unexplored, or known insecure with unpatched issues?
Oops, I meant 50 parsecs. Slashdot should really allow comment editing for logged-in users...
-SaNo
Earth is stown only as a dot with a label, zooming in doesn't work. Beh, and I wanted to see how good data they have around my home :p.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Of the Chart demo in BeOS.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Found Vega still no signs of life :(
for me at least. Chrome takes way more CPU on my Linux 64-bit machine.
Also, instructions say use mouse to pan, but mouse rotates--could not find out how to pan, so could never get close to anything but our own neighborhood...
You do realize, it's very unlikely that your trolling/shilling deters one Google user. While at the same time, it is very likely, that it reinforces many Google users. You're doing a very poor job.
How dare they control the data they've spent so much to collect! If only there was some way for you to make your own search engine, and gather such results.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
Ok I know my computer is definitely sub-par graphic-wise by today standards, but the performance is atrocious.
And I'm talking about FPW (Frames Per Week) here.
FPS on the other hand (Fuck Per Second) is rather high though.
Oh, and the mouse wheel's zoom controls are reversed.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
And I at one point considered doing something like this with a modern browser - but nothing ever came of it (should'a would'a could'a - gotten off my lazy ass and tried).
Instead I found this:
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe
If you want a standalone app for a star map, this seems like a good (and free!) place to start, and the db looks like something vaguely resembling an open licence (I admit I didn't read into it).
Why don't you stop breaking the damn browser instead of doing crap stuff like this. Seriously for going back to Firefox for main again, and I REALLY don't want to do that.
Damn the most recent version is insanely laggier at anything even remotely animated. Choppy audio too.
Old version is completely fine, so don't even say it before you think it.
Very fascinating.
I zoomed in on Polaris, You can see the binary stars orbiting each other and flares on the surface.
I can see this sucking up many hours.
Would love to hook this up to a robot telescope in the back yard. Where the laptop can direct the telescope and the telescope direct the laptop.
Very nice! Congrats Google. Now, for version 2.0, how about we add proper motion of the stars along with some gravitational forces so we can see how the whole n-body problem plays out. Let us zoon forward and backward in time!
It makes sense to open up the index. They currently have zero pressure to innovate on search. The only pressure they feel is on "social search" from facebook and twitter. And that has made them innovate eg Circles, Hangouts etc.
There are many other models for search - freebase/dbpedia, wolfram alpha etc. They can always rate limit/charge for access. Even possibly do an "app store" for search. Of course no such thing will happen cause like AT&T they have got to big and are now in "lets defend the empire" mode.
I tried this out at least a month ago.
Way cool, yes.
News, no.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Warning: Scientific accuracy is not guaranteed. Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation.
I never understood why Google Chrome chose to actually compile flash into their engine... until my Mac OSX 10.5 laptop was "depricated". Now it makes sense. There is a lot of money to be had forcing users to upgrade their OS because none of the software works any longer.
Firefox and Safari work fine and I'm able to download Flash updates, but Chrome no longer works without bugging me to death about Flash being too old. I literally have no choice but to manually enable each and every page every time one loads. As a Software Engineer I know there is no technical reason for this. As a business owner I know that there is almost no direct cost associated with allowing a user to use the external system flash instead of a compiled-in flash. In fact, the cost of ensuring successful build and delivery would be considerably higher when one must ship with a third-party product accounted for and shipped together with a binary distribution. Thus the only remaining reason is to help Apple convince users to upgrade.
I have a good bit more evidence that Google plays dirty against consumers, but I used to figure that it was just an inevitable symptom of becoming a big successful corporation and that at least their technology wouldn't suffer for it. I'm no longer convinced this is true.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Just like playing Frontier Elite 2 again...only in a...[ehem]...enhanced edition.
Warning: Scientific accuracy is not guaranteed. Please do not use this visualization for interstellar navigation.
You'll never make the Kessel Run like that.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
more to the point, what has this story got to do with Apple..? c'mon guys, slashdot is slipping.
There has been an app named "What'sUp" on the Blackberry Playbook tablets for more than one year that shows this and far more, allowing you for instance to point the tablet to the sky and show exactly which stars are in that direction at this time.
It's a classical example of using all the sensors (GPS, gravity and magnetic).
As far as I remember, nobody kneeled at the time.
Ah yes, it was not GOOGLE-branded. Sorry, mod me flamebait, quick, before thinking.
Link to the Blackberry App world: https://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/48561/?model=PlayBook&lang=en
Herve S.