Posted on 11/15/2012 8:46:43 PM PST by lbryce
Please remember that this app works only in Google Chrome
Screenshot from 100,000 Stars
Want to explore the Milky Way? A new visualization tool from Google called 100,000 Stars lets you take a tour of our cosmic neighborhood, and with a few clicks of your mouse you can zoom in, out and around and do a little learning along the way. Zoom in to learn the names of some of the closest stars; click on the names to find out more information about them.
Playing with it is great fun, and Ive been experimenting with it for a while. The most important caveat about 100,000 Stars is that you need to run it in Chrome. Its from the Chrome Experiment team, and it uses imagery and data from NASA and ESA, but the majority of what you are seeing are artists renditions. Remove this ad
The best way to get started is to click on the Take the Tour in the upper left hand corner.
But if you just want to zoom in, you can see the closest stars to us. The Sun is in the middle, and if you zoom in even further, youll see the Oort Cloud. Keep zooming in to find the planetary orbits (I was struck by how much zooming had to be done to get to the planets, giving a sense of scale).
It includes some nifty spacey-like music (provided by Sam Hulick, who video game fans may recognize as a composer for the popular space adventure series, Mass Effect) but if youd rather explore in silence, hit your mute button.
What I enjoyed the most is moving my mouse up and down to see the 3-D effect of how everything fits together, providing a sense of the cosmic web that holds our universe together.
I posted this just for you. Loads of fun. Google Chrome Only
That is dynamite. But I don’t have Google Chrome and it worked for me.
Pretty cool. But I couldn’t get info on any stars other than Sun to come up.
I don’t have Chrome either and it worked.
Thanks for posting this. I love it!
[snip] Google Chrome Only [/snip]An 'extra, extra' to APoD members.
Bookmark.
I don't have Chrome on this pc (1) but I'll give it a shot anyway. Seems to work for some folks w/o Chrome.
(1) I do have Chrome on my 'work-business' pc but would rather not start putting personal stuff on it. (and when I do surf the net for work related stuff I use Firefox)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.