This article was published on November 14, 2012

100,000 Stars: Google’s latest Chrome experiment taps NASA to visually explore the Milky Way


100,000 Stars: Google’s latest Chrome experiment taps NASA to visually explore the Milky Way

Last week, Google launched ‘Jam with Chrome’, an experimental Web app to play virtual instruments with friends. And now its rolled out 100,000 Stars, that helps you visualize the exact location of stars throughout the Milky Way.

With 200 billion stars, there’s a lot to see in our galaxy, and through tapping a myriad of imagery and data from a range of sources, including NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), Google plots the nearest stars to Earth’s Sun.

Using Chrome’s WebGL, CSS3D, and Web Audio support, you can zoom in and out to explore the layout of the stars, set against a dreamy soundtrack. You can click on each name to learn more about it and see a digital rendition, and zoom all the way out to get a little context for where l’il ol’ us sits in the grand scheme of things.

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We have to say, it is pretty neat and well worth checking out.

100,000 Stars

Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock

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