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ESA Releases Largest Star Map Ever Online (gizmodo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the come-and-get-it dept.

S810 writes: The European Space Agency (ESA) has released a treasure trove of data from its Gaia Spacecraft; totaling around 1.7 billion stars. This star map is the largest of its kind to date. In addition to the star map, the data also contains motion and color data of 1.3 billion stars relative to the Sun. Furthermore, it includes "radial velocities, amount of dust, and surface temperatures of lots of stars, and a catalogue of over 14,000 Solar System objects, including asteroids," reports Gizmodo. You can view the data here, and view a guide for what the data contains and how to use it here.

13 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. Eve Online by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Cool, always thought space agencies should have the best gaming input ;)

    1. Re:Eve Online by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      A space MMO based on this data and the exoplanet data would be insanely awesome. Mix it with something like a mix of Planetside and Section 8 - bloody good time could be had.

    2. Re:Eve Online by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 4, Interesting

      > A space MMO based on this data and the exoplanet data would be insanely awesome.

      Yes and no.

      There are multiple problems.

      The #1 problem, as said famously by Douglas Adam, is: Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.

      Unless you give players:

      * FTL (Faster then Light) / Warp Speed ,and
      * Multiple reasons to navigate around the galaxy

      Exploration alone is pretty boring. One of the primary reasons EVE Online has lasted so long because of POS - Player Owned Structures/Stations, such as Starbases and Citadels

      The #2 problem is: What does progression look like?
      i.e. What is the end game? What do players _actually_ do that will keep them interested?

      If you search for how scientifically accurate is elite dangerous you will come find that Elite:Dangerous already has part of its star map based on real star systems:

      Space.com: What's unique about Elite: Dangerous' Stellar Forge?

      David Braben: Everything we've got in the game is real. We've got some 160,000 star systems that are from star catalogs, and the rest are created using sophisticated algorithms ...

      We've got around 1,000 systems [in the game] discovered each minute by real people, where no one has ever been before. People can equip their ship and just head out into the unknown. But that's still 0.001 percent of the galaxy that has been discovered in the year since we went live.

      Elite:Dangerous even "loosely" predicted the Trappist-1 sytem.

      You may also be interested in:

      * Orbiter
      * Space Simulator
      * Kerbal space program

      I haven't played those so can't confirm their accuracy.

    3. Re:Eve Online by JMJimmy · · Score: 1

      Of course you'd give them FTL and proper game mechanics. This data would just give added realism. Updates come in the form of new scientific knowledge updating the game's environment (along with typical game updates). It could even be built as a base "sim" environment for any developer to add their own mechanics on top of.

  2. Star map link very confusing by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand the first ("Star Map") link in the summary. It is only 8 million pixels, it cannot show 1.3 billion independent stars.

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    1. Re:Star map link very confusing by wbr1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It is rendered from the data, which is available in the other links. You want to render all the stars, grab the data and do so. For one, I am glad the image was not any larger - I do not need my browser to choke on that.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    2. Re:Star map link very confusing by The+Grim+Reefer · · Score: 1

      I don't understand the first ("Star Map") link in the summary. It is only 8 million pixels, it cannot show 1.3 billion independent stars.

      Thanks for your comment. It made me decide to take a look. I don't remember the last time I had to wait for an image to load from the top down like that. It kind of felt like I was back in 1997 downloading Hubble images from NASA over dial up.

    3. Re:Star map link very confusing by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      For one, I am glad the image was not any larger - I do not need my browser to choke on that.

      An 8 megapixel image is only slightly larger than a UHD screen... not entirely browser choking size. A lot of phones and digital cameras will take larger photos. Most people's screens however cannot show all the pixels in one go, though without scrolling.

    4. Re:Star map link very confusing by wbr1 · · Score: 2

      I was not referring to the 8MB image. I was referring to the size if all 1.3 billion stars were rendered. The image would be some % ofer 1.3 gigapixels. Rather large.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
  3. Re: Great. Now I can steer my ..... by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

    So you have narrowed it down for Texas then.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  4. Re:Hmmm .... visualiser? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 2

    It was probably either:

    * Celestia
    * Stellarium

    There is also this WebGL Stars demo back from 2012.

  5. For a moment I was reading ... by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 2

    ESA Releases Largest Star Map of Eve Online

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  6. Re:each of us could have our own planet? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

    Drugs are bad, man...

    Certainly the ones s/he has been taking.

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"