Starfield

Umbes

Despite my relative lack of knowledge in the field, I'm fascinated by astronomy and cosmology — I entered Princeton hoping to be an astrophysics major. I discovered this wonderful compilation of the Hipparcos catalog, the Yale Bright Star catalog, and the Gliese catalog, and decided to teach myself a little three.js in an attempt to visualize the data. Starfield is a work in progress. Right now, I have a 3D visualization of all 119,000+ stars in the catalog, using a three.js particle system. Click and drag to rotate the star system; use your mouse wheel or trackpad to zoom in or out. In future, I plan to use layers for better performance, allow for click-zooming, and improve the labeling, which is currently done using sprites but might be better accomplished by integrating CSS with the three.js camera system.