Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

https://valhovey.github.io/gaia-mary/

by speleo • 2 months ago

1200 244 2 months ago

valhovey.github.io

ge967• 2 months ago

I am so happy this movie did great, the book was great

Similar to me books: Bobiverse, Long Way To A Small Angry Planet

I'm not a heavy reader

This site is cool, I want to get to know stellar navigation stuff for astrophotography watching a video like this where they pull up star charts to point the telescope at it pretty cool https://www.youtube.com/live/TexqPMQMyZg?si=oEnvrxW21-D0VXGV...

Tangent I'll throw in here, I never get the fabric folding gravity well diagrams as it seems to have a "down" direction, I guess it looks like it's down since it's a slice but the effect is an inward sphere?

lstodd3• 2 months ago

it's like an inverse gas bubble underwater, or a liquid blob in gas in microgravity, but without phase border.

see, it's not that easy to explain or visualise.

ge967• 2 months ago

Yeah I watched this video recently about slingshotting I can see how it works but yeah https://youtu.be/-CqBP-CtM0c?si=BdCiZwWgpAp07mgs&t=15

It's not like there is a "down" it's just you're looking at it from a top view?

stevenwoo2• 2 months ago

Just a question - why do you classify Long Way with PHM - because there are aliens working with humans? I don’t see any other similarities. The technology IIRC (haven’t read in years) in the Becky Chambers book is closer to Star Trek than reality, and there’s not that much of an overarching plot - which is not to say a book cannot be good without one but it’s a big difference.

ge967• 2 months ago

True less technical and space themed so maybe not fitting just a fun easy read

Oh yeah another series would be Nick Webb Constitution (Legacy Fleet), I think I got farther into that series but didn't finish it unlike Bobiverse, maybe I did finish this trilogy, I haven't read books in a while honestly. That was a good series though I remember the depiction of the space battles.

Trying to be better at being in the moment vs. watching youtube/scrolling a website at the same time kind of thing

imglorp• 2 months ago

I guess it looks like it's down since it's a slice but the effect is an inward sphere?

Yes, gravity is a vector field: every point in space near a heavy body has a vector pointed at the center of the body with a magnitude of the field strength. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_field

Whenever someone uses fabric sheet analogy, they need to shout that the X-Y of the sheet is a 2 dimensional analog of X-Y-Z space, and the Z direction of the sheet is the field magnitude, with the slope indicating direction.

All models are wrong, but some are useful (for understanding).

ge967• 2 months ago

Other thing is I believe they say gravity is strongest at the center of the sphere/core but I would think the mass is split evenly away from the core eg. maybe 2/3 radius from the center where it's equal mass on each side. But probably doesn't make sense wouldn't be a ball.

wrs• 2 months ago

The next thing they do after showing you the sheet is to roll a ball around the stretched part to demonstrate an orbit. Explaining how that analogy works starts to take more math than the actual field you’re trying to explain!

godzillabrennus• 2 months ago

I doubt my opinion will be well-received by all, but I hope that creators like the author of the Bobiverse will be able to, affordably and within their own capabilities, create new forms of content, such as AI-generated long-form content, like entire TV seasons, as the technology matures. That series is fantastic.

jamilton• 2 months ago

According to the author, it's been optioned to Lord Miller Productions, the same group that adapted Project Hail Mary.

Hikikomori• 2 months ago

In the vein of popcorn scifi, expeditionary force books are fun.

ge967• 2 months ago

Added to my kindle list, funny I tried to read Gravity's Rainbow as I heard it in a song, I did not get far, on the topic of reading, it is related to rockets but yeah

makach• 2 months ago

Elite Dangerous does it better. Pretty but idk.. get the AI generated feeling.

royal__2• 2 months ago

What specifically about this feels AI generated. It might be, IDK, but I'm not seeing any tells, so wondering if you could expand.

hombre_fatal• 2 months ago

I'm not saying it looks AI generated, but AI made it possible to polish things to a level that very few people took the time to ever do themselves.

This is a great thing, but it's also a tell since we all saw the UIs people were building by hand pre-AI.

That said, I don't think it matters. What matters is whether it's low quality.

zetalyrae• 2 months ago

The font looks like the same font in every AI-generated visualization like this.

dkobia• 2 months ago

Thank you for making this whoever you are. There is a wonderful video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FT-oz9aZU4 that visualizes space travel and time dilation in Hail Mary. What I wished I had immediately after watching it was an interactive stellar chart.

speleo5• 2 months ago

You're welcome! I love that channel so much. Their videos and the blog post I link in the about section/citations on the starmap were inspirations for making this.

sigmar2• 2 months ago

this is cool. My nit pick- aren't the petrova lines curving along the wrong plane? For example, in our solar system the line should start at the sun and should be pointed at where Venus used to be, but then curve towards where Venus is now (until gets to venus). Since the astrophage will course-correct over their journey and stay in the same plane as Venus' orbit.

slg• 2 months ago

It has been a little while since I read the book, but I think you have the cause of the curve wrong. These things are moving at such a high percentage of the speed of light that there isn't much visible curve from the movement of the planet. The curve is instead caused by them leaving the star at the pole (which leads to a different nitpick of the visualization since the curve isn't shaped to represent that). It's theorized that the Astrophage do this to make is easier to find their way as exiting the plane of the solar system reduces the chances of there being any occultation blocking their view of their destination.

sigmar2• 2 months ago

oooph, been a while and I don't remember any of those details. Good excuse for me to re-read it!

rdtsc2• 2 months ago

I can also recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FT-oz9aZU4 Time Dilation Visualized (by The Overview Effekt).

It talks about the distances and times involved and how time compression and astrophage infection rates work out. As a fan of the book and the movie it was nice to see the actual 3D star chart of everything. (warning: there may be spoilers there)

titanomachy• 2 months ago

The time dilation aspect of it is cool, but doesn’t discuss how far we are from a propulsion system that could credibly pull this off. Even if we solved fusion it wouldn’t get us remotely close. Maybe if you could somehow produce 50 tonnes of antimatter you could do it. But we have no idea how to produce antimatter efficiently or at scale, and even if we could do it with 100% efficiency, it would take many years of humanity’s current energy budget just to make the antimatter fuel for a single manned trip.

To me it seems like we’d need new physics (not just new technology) to have any chance of pulling this stuff off.

The book dodges these inconvenient numbers with a bit of a deus ex machina plot device that I won’t spoil here :)

rdtsc2• 2 months ago

Definitely, the amounts of energy needed are is beyond anything realistic today or anytime soon. It’s still clarified the principle for me that we could in theory at least reach those points in a human lifetime.

waynecochran2• 2 months ago

Very cool. On Voyager 2 we placed a map on the side of the probe that places the position of our sun based on an array of Pulsar stars (the map was designed by Carl Sagan). I noted in the PHM movie Rocky and Dr Grace made similar 3D maps (I think they were pulsars(?)). I guess pulsars form natural beacons that can be detected at large distances.

twoodfin• 2 months ago

Pulsars also have a rotational period that provides a reference point for interpreting arithmetic notation.

shagie2• 2 months ago

Cosmos : The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean - https://youtu.be/x-bJLG9_sUg?si=1K96fMX2T9iXu0zA&t=783

For the "how far?" https://www.aanda.org/articles/aa/full_html/2011/04/aa16141-...

We can get timing (rather than imaging) parallax...

We find that with the first method a parallax with an accuracy of 20% or less can be measured up to a maximum distance of 13 kpc, which would include 9000 pulsars. By timing pulsars with the most stable arrival times for the radio emission, parallaxes can be measured for about 3600 ms pulsars up to a distance of 9 kpc with an accuracy of 20%.

(one kpc is 3261 light years)

Not only can they be detected at large distances, but measurements of how far can be done at greater distances than can be done with imaging ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMaT9oRbs4&t=608s ).

hgoel6• 2 months ago

I thought the maps they made were of the neighborhood of stars around Tau Ceti, marking their respective home stars with the petrova line.

waynecochran2• 2 months ago

I believe you are correct. Way too close to use pulsars…

Deprogrammer9• 2 months ago

Movie was awesome & will be watching again.

ggreer• 2 months ago

Just FYI the sizes of the planets, stars, and their orbits are not to scale at all. To get an idea of how empty space is, there are 63,360 inches in a mile, and 63,239 astronomical units in a light-year. So if you scaled everything down such that Earth was 1 inch from the Sun, Neptune would be 30 inches away and Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away.

If you were using a 4k display and had the Sun and Alpha Centauri visible at opposite sides of the display, the orbit of Neptune would be in the same pixel as the Sun.

hnuser123456• 2 months ago

Mercury is orbiting partially inside the Sun, and Jupiter is nearly as wide as the Sun when it should be 1/10 as much, so the planet nodes should be scaled down 10x relative to the Sun.

Also, I did a top-down pixel measurement, where I could see the distance to Tau Ceti as well as the orbit of Neptune. The radius of Neptune's orbit was 32px, while the distance to Tau Ceti was 1152px, for a ratio of 36, when in reality, Tau Ceti is 11.9 ly away, while Neptune has an orbit radius of 30 AU, which means Tau Ceti is around 25,000 Neptune orbits away, so the planet orbit scale is too big (or distance to other stars too small) by a factor of ~694 (25000/36)

Edit: Since this was top-down, the vertical displacement didn't factor into the distance, which also contributed to Tau Ceti appearing too close on screen, so the error is slightly better than that, maybe a factor of 600.

Edit 2: Tau Ceti is rendered at 3.652 pc × 3 world units/pc = 10.956 world units

Neptune’s orbit radius is rendered as 30.05 AU × 0.0065 world units/AU = 0.195325 world units

The rendered ratio is 10.956 / 0.195325 = 56.09 Neptune-orbit radii

The real ratio should be 25,067.5 Neptune-orbit radii

The scale error = 25,067.5 / 56.09 = 446.9×

Reason0772• 2 months ago

Also, since we're nit-picking, the positions of the planets are not being updated in real time. For example, I know that Venus and Jupiter are currently approaching conjunction: there are spectacular views of them both at sunset right now here in the Southern Hemisphere!

ForOldHack• 2 months ago

Thanks: All your math checks out.

api4• 2 months ago

Even sci-fi writers that try to get this right have a hard time wrapping their heads around it.

"It's called space for a reason."

When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close.

the_af5• 2 months ago

When I saw the series adaptation of The Expanse, it was really obvious they played a lot of artistic license to make it exciting. A real space battle would be dots firing invisible dots at each other. "Close quarter battle" would be within something like 2000 kilometers, maybe more. That is close.

This is noteworthy because The Expanse tried to get this better than other scifi, say Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or Star Wars (ok, space opera), where engagements take place at absurdly short ranges. In The Expanse you see the spaceships are really far apart, mostly dots to each other, and the engagements are (mostly) at really long torpedo ranges, with the exception of those cool scenes using PDCs. You get all those awesome shots where one spaceship sees the other as a tiny dot, then the camera zooms in dramatically to the other point of view. Cool!

And still, engagements are far too close range. But they "feel" long range in The Expanse, I think they got that visually right. I cannot blame them because I haven't seen anything any space combat in shows or movies that is even half as exciting and well done.

QuercusMax2• 2 months ago

I recently read The Mote in God's Eye and its (much later) sequel The Gripping Hand, which had very interesting long-distance space combat scenes with high powered lasers - which only move at the speed of light. There's a very real "fog of war" element where you might be VERY out of date with what's happening just due to radio transmission speeds / direct observation.

loeg• 2 months ago

I don't think the Expanse authors were going for "hard sci-fi." There's, you know, fiction elements -- gates, aliens, magic. And the TV series is itself an adaptation of the books for a visual medium. Showing almost nothing would make for kind of boring TV combat.

pmontra3• 2 months ago

All of those authors usually have to resort to the idea of "shipping lanes" so if the heroes are stranded between two planets eventually someone else will pass close to them on the way from one of those planets to the other one. This is wrong in a number of ways (first of all, they keep going anyway) but without that and without magically powerful fuels plots would be "they launched from Mars to Neptune, forget about them for the next three seasons, they'll be there at the beginning of the fourth one".

golem14• 2 months ago

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

   “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."

db48x• 2 months ago

That’s quite true. But even leaving that aside, most space battles are poorly written too. One of the best that I know of is the battle for Proxima from Babylon 5 (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE7lZv6LmrM>). This one is really good because we know why the battle is important, why the battle is going to happen here and not somewhere else, but most importantly we learn who the _people_ are (or at least the captains). They become characters, not just anonymous chits on a map.

Although the Expanse did well in some areas, it had no battles that were as well written or as memorable as this one.

dylan6045• 2 months ago

Sure, but why does this need to be to scale. Isn't the point more to get the humans a way of understanding where things are relatively? Navigating the map makes it interesting in being able to interactively see where some of the stars are relative to each other. Seeing Regulus and Castor/Pollux from this perspective is much different than on terra firma.

foxglacier• 2 months ago

It can't do that if it's not to scale! And who knows where the errors are? Neptune's orbit is way too big compared to Alpha Centauri. Are other stars also way too close compared to that? I can't stand these intentionally misleading education images of stuff. You have to work at undoing the artistic license of the author before it's useful.

Mogzol• 2 months ago

Another comparison: if you count the "solar system" as ending at Neptune's orbit (obviously it extends much further, but just for the sake of comparison), then you could fit ~4465 "solar systems" in between our sun and the closest star, Proxima Centauri.

didgetmaster2• 2 months ago

As I understand it, there is no consensus on the size of our solar system. We can measure the orbits of the planets, but it is much harder to measure where the Kuiper Belt or the Oort cloud ends. Estimates on both of those vary greatly.

estetlinus• 2 months ago

FYI we have a up to scale model of the solar system in Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Solar_System

Come visit!

signalbright• 2 months ago

Wow. Such an awesome idea! Thank you, you made my day

tintor• 2 months ago

That is awesome!

hoppyhoppy2• 2 months ago

That looks really cool! I've visited scale models of the solar system in Eugene, Oregon[1] and Norwich, Vermont[2], but neither one is anywhere near that size.

[1] https://eugenesciencecenter.org/exhibits/eugene-solar-system...

[2] https://montshire.org/exhibit/exhibits/outdoor-discovery-tra...

etoxin• 2 months ago

Here in Australia we have earths largest scale model of our solar system.

https://www.nsw.gov.au/visiting-and-exploring-nsw/locations-...

chasil• 2 months ago

There is one in Corpus Christi (Texas) that I've seen.

https://www.visitcorpuschristi.com/blog/post/things-to-do-on...

markcerqueira• 2 months ago

There is also one in Palo Alto, California! https://www.paloaltozoo.org/Exhibits/Solar-System-Model

jurakovic• 2 months ago

There is also one in Zagreb, Croatia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Views

EvanAnderson• 2 months ago

Traverse City, MI has one on their bike trail system: https://traversetrails.org/solar-system/

l1am0• 2 months ago

We have one in Munich as well. Quite nice walk along the river

https://www.deutsches-museum.de/museumsinsel/programm/progra...

It is old, hence Pluto is still part of it

sdoering• 2 months ago

There is a Wikipedia List (German) [1] of quite a few of those (in Germany and in other countries). I stumbled upon it, while trying to find a link to the one in my home town I have wandered quite a few times, as I lived between Neptun and Pluto (it was built before Pluto was demoted), very close to Pluto. It ran the street I grew up in and was built to scale (1:4 bln scale) by a teacher who was a full blown astro nerd and in his free time taught quite a few of the local youth about space, planets, the science behind it, but also built rockets with us and let them fly.

I so fondly remember him, as he was one of those people being a massive inspiration to my life.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetenweg

Edit: Added scale.

MadnessASAP• 2 months ago

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct. However! That would be a terrible UX/UI experience. While showing distances on a linear scale is accurate, it fails to capture all the information a person in an interstellar ship may wish to see.

Something like logarithmic distances would better capture information like "Am I about to crash into the star or enter a nice orbit" while still showing the full picture of where you are in relation to where you're going and where you came from.

No idea of that's what happened here, just a thought, I'm not an expert in starship computer interface design.

austin-cheney• 2 months ago

I suspect this lack of scale on the planets was intentional from a usability perspective, because otherwise the planets be bits of dark dust that would be really hard to find. Jupiter has 11x more diameter than Earth and the Sun is 109x larger. When you consider the size of the solar system (including the Oort cloud) the Sun itself is bit a spec of tiny dust.

nekusar• 2 months ago

It can be summed up as "Ken Meets Jesus", "Ken Goes to Space", "Ken is a bumbling moron", "Ken's first friend". "Ken's White Savior moment"

This appears to be the norm for US based scifi now. Glad I'm watching movies like The Wandering Earth and Alienoid instead.

It had a good premise. But it also fell apart immediately. Like, they only sent 3 people, 2 whom died on this UBER CRITICAL SAVE THE PLANET idea?

And Ryan Gosling's character is a fucking moron. You're supposed to be a molecular biologist, and you're basically a reddit-gag line?

Edit: lol -4 , like seriously, its a pretty bad show. I listed movies I compare it to. But no I get shit like "You must be fun at parties." Personal attacks, sigh.

TwoNineA• 2 months ago

You must be fun at parties.

lstodd3• 2 months ago

As a european arthouse cinema snob I must say Gosling would have made a nice stand-in for Rocco Siffredi. Maybe.

tantalor• 2 months ago

White Savior moment

???

rpmisms3• 2 months ago

White people doing anything good is actually bad. Duh.

/s, but I think I'm accurately describing the viewpoint you're responding to.

cv5005• 2 months ago

Chinese film having 100% chinese cast = good.

American film having a single white male lead = not good.

acheron• 2 months ago

It’s a troll. Just flag and move on.

Uncle_Brumpus• 2 months ago

Did Ken also get his catheter yanked out like in the book? I don't plan on watching the movie but that's the only thing I would even care a tiny bit if they included, because I just felt like it was such an odd highly specific bit and I want to know if they committed for the big screen.

ge967• 2 months ago

The Wandering Earth

That's a movie you watch while drinking, take a shot every time you see something absurd

celsoazevedo• 2 months ago

Edit: lol -4 , like seriously, its a pretty bad show. [...]

I don't think the downvotes are because you expressed the view that the film is bad.

It's mainstream science fiction using tech we don't have. It will never make a lot of sense. And then you decide to bring skin colour/race into the discussion. What do you expect?

the_af5• 2 months ago

But it also fell apart immediately. Like, they only sent 3 people, 2 whom died on this UBER CRITICAL SAVE THE PLANET idea?

(I didn't downvote, you have a right to dislike a popular movie or book)

They explain why only 3 people (it's a bit contrived, but there's genetics involved), and why no more ships. It's an emergency, a resource and time-constrained mission on which a few things go wrong even before they depart. The world is on full emergency mode, rushing things and getting things wrong. The crew isn't even the initial pick, but there's an accident involved. The lead director believes she'll probably end up in prison after the mission launches. I don't know, it makes sense to me.

And Ryan Gosling's character is a fucking moron. You're supposed to be a molecular biologist, and you're basically a reddit-gag line?

I think the meme-speak, which I also found a bit jarring, is simply Andy Weir's less-than-good writing style. I think Weir isn't a particularly good writer, but he managed to write an engrossing adventure which I enjoyed.

In-universe, molecular biologists and scientists in general do have sense of humor, enjoy memes, and are generally capable of doing and saying the dumbest things. So it also kind of works!

luke5441• 2 months ago

I think OP only watched the movie. The book is a bit better at showing the main character actually being competent at times. In the movie they (for obvious reasons, but they could have done perhaps once) skip him going down science rabbit holes.

hgoel6• 2 months ago

I thought the portrayal of scientists was a lot more true to life than most media. Millennial and older Zoomers are old enough to be in these positions now, they aren't going to talk or dress like boomers.

mr_toad4• 2 months ago

And Ryan Gosling's character is a fucking moron. You're supposed to be a molecular biologist, and you're basically a reddit-gag line?

The thing about very smart people is that they can still manage to miss the bus.

And if you have read any of Andy Weirs other books they have a common theme of one person who’s in over their head who basically bumbles through by the skin of their teeth.

shikshake• 2 months ago

I agree with your sentiment but this is not the place to complain about a movie you dislike. OP is showing off a project they made, trying to make them feel bad about liking a movie is tactless and reflects poorly on you.

TeaVMFan• 2 months ago

For other software engineers thinking of following in Andy Weir's footsteps and writing a novel, I put together my guide to self-publishing using software tools and techniques here: https://frequal.com/forwriters/

Esophagus4• 2 months ago

Didn’t know he was a programmer!

retrocryptid• 2 months ago

NICE!

V__• 2 months ago

"Thumbs" down

IdiotSavage• 2 months ago

Amaze!

staindk• 2 months ago

Fist my bump

elteto• 2 months ago

You mean up. Question.

gatkinso• 2 months ago

Pretty cool, I would suggest removing the z axis grids. Finding them very distracting

VikingCoder• 2 months ago

I'm at the point where if there's a computer display, or 3D model, or any asset in a movie, I want there to be a Kickstarter to pay the producers to open source the original assets. Even if it's a super restrictive license.

I want all of the War Games original graphics. I know people have come a long way. But I want all of them.

The "Hackers" movie. "Sneakers". "The Matrix". These individual assets deserve to be preserved! They're iconic. They're art, in their own rights!

xixixao• 2 months ago

This is so beautiful, this thread doesn't have enough praise! It's not easy to get this "right". Lovely!

speleo5• 2 months ago

Thank you!

cheschire• 2 months ago

Glad to see it includes Wolf 359.

Edit: oh interesting. Apparently it was mentioned in the book as being affected by the astrophage. I forgot that tidbit and thought it was just a Star Trek reference.

pavel_lishin• 2 months ago

Yeah, and it's one of the nearby stars in reality.

It's also sort of the subject - and title! - of this great short story: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/macleod_12_17_reprint/

jimnotgym• 2 months ago

I had sudden memories of playing Frontier: Elite 2.

I wanted to go to Sol, buy luxury goods...and take them to Barnards Star

maniacalrobot• 2 months ago

Yep, quick trip in your panther clipper to ross 154, park up and buy everything on the planet.

alexfoo• 2 months ago

I have a dim memory that one of my A-Level physics teachers (David Massey) was credited as a consultant on the Newtonian physics in F:E2.

The game came out at the start of my upper-sixth year so it often came up during his classes.

mr_toad4• 2 months ago

I have memories of using a hex editor to edit the save file to get enough money to buy a docking computer because even as a kid my technical abilities were much better than my hand eye coordination.

speleo5• 2 months ago

Hi there! This is Val, I made the star chart. There's a little "about" blurb you can open in a modal on the site, but I wanted to mention that this demo uses the amazing GAIA DR3 dataset from ESA. I have a Python script that renders all 1.8+ billion stars into custom images, which is what I used for the skybox. The star positions and colors all use the GAIA data (save for a few bright stars not in the set). The data is amazing, and if you have any interest in doing some fun projects with open data I recommend checking it out: https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/dr3

asabla• 2 months ago

Super cool! how long did it take to generate all those custom images?

speleo5• 2 months ago

Thanks! On my desktop it takes around 20 minutes to generate a full sky render with 1.8 billion stars (down to around 22 magnitude).

codesnik• 2 months ago

but why solar system is so out of scale?

kridsdale1• 2 months ago

Because it’s more cool and important.

Reason0772• 2 months ago

Human-centric thinking.

wlesieutre• 2 months ago

Great map. Wish the star map in Starfield was this nice!

echelon• 2 months ago

This is really cool!

Feature request: can you add WASD navigation? Arrow keys are weird on different keyboards. On mine they're squashed into the corner and not fun to use. WASD is the OG OP way to navigate. (WASDQE, where QE are the vertical plane, if you're into Unreal Engine key bindings.)

joemi4• 2 months ago

I don't know if I'd say it's the OG way. Both HJKL and numpad predate WASD, I think.

ChipopLeMoral• 2 months ago

This is cool, can you add a focus on 40 Eridani view please?

orsenthil• 2 months ago

Since you built it, I am curious about the scientific accuracy of the movie, book and while taking the information GAIA DR3. I wanted to assume at least the stars part is science, but I think, there is a lot of fiction in that setting. Is this map the reality of what we know as science, since it came from GAIA DR3 dataset?

And, thank you very much. This is super cool and exciting. I wish such a one exists for Asimov's foundation universe (fiction).

JonathonW• 2 months ago

The stars featured in the movie and in this chart (and in the book) are real, and reflect their real-world locations.

The planets around the stars, aside from our own solar system (obviously), are fictional-- both Tau Ceti and 40 Eridani are stars where we're looking for exoplanets, but we don't have strong evidence for either yet.

nunez2• 2 months ago

The book does a significantly better job explaining the science behind the mission than the movie (which I found insulting, but I'm clearly in the minority of holding that opinion).

mcswell3• 2 months ago

Not about the stars part or the map, but xenonite struck me as rather odd from a scientific standpoint. Apparently it's some organic chemical bonded--somehow--to xenon. But the mystery depended on the mass spectrometer Grace uses to analyze xenonite not being able to detect nuclei of atoms smaller than some atomic number (something like 20?). So he couldn't tell what it was made of, except for xenon. My initial assumption was that it had to do with one of the few xenon-based compounds we know about, XeF4 (xenon tetrafloride), but there must be more to it than that.

ProofHouse• 2 months ago

So very cool! Have been tooling on some very similar space mapping and smiled as I was looking at this. Love the data recommend have not seen that yet, thanks!

brcmthrowaway• 2 months ago

Claude?

wutwutwat• 2 months ago

I had claude shit out a site that tracked the recent moon flyby mission and the visual feel of that site is very much like this one, and my first thought when the page loaded was this was an ai project.

Sadly we live in a world where software engineer "stolen valor" now exists, where someone with no or little actual engineering ability will use ai to shit out something and then claim they made it themselves.

Not 100% certain that's happening here, but it can't be a coincidence that this site looks so much like a site I had AI create tracking other things in space, imo

redbluething2• 2 months ago

This is awesome!! I made a map of the events in the Martian many years ago (https://www.cannonade.net/mars.php) and when I read Hail Mary I wondered if something could be created for the new book.

You completely nailed it!! :)

simgt• 2 months ago

That's an awesome website! I had never heard of Patrick O'Brian before looking at your maps, I'll give The Mauritius Command a read.

taikon• 2 months ago

How many 3D bodies are there? I'm curious because it renders really fast even on a relatively old mobile phone.

shit_game• 2 months ago

If I counted things correctly, 53,836.

I wanted to hook into the THREE object and explore the scene, but I wasn't able to figure out how to bring it back into scope after it's been optimized out of the js context, so instead I searched through the bundle to find where it unpacks the data and did that manually.

teekert• 2 months ago

Very cool! With a few additions (and with part 5 a lot perhaps) you can also have one for the Bobbiverse! (I recognize some names)

matt727• 2 months ago

I've had making something like this for the Bobbiverse in the back of my mind for years. Maybe this is what finally will make me start.

rob74• 2 months ago

Cool! One question: what do the planes represent? I thought it was the galactic plane and planes parallel to it, but then I saw that the "band" of the galaxy is (almost?) perpendicular to it, which doesn't fit somehow?

EDIT: TIL that the ecliptic plane of the Solar System is at an 60.2° angle to the galactic plane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_plane#/media/File:Mot...) - until now I somehow assumed that they were more or less parallel and never questioned that assumption. So it looks like the "main" plane is the ecliptic plane (which is of course very anthropocentric, after all the ecliptic plane doesn't really matter anymore once you leave the Solar System? But I guess that was they way it was shown in the movie?). Would be interesting to be able to switch to showing the galactic plane instead...

adolph2• 2 months ago

Thank you for posting this. I wonder if anyone has made a physical galactic orrery. It seems that the concept is used in the video game Warhammer.

Something implicit in the diagrams of the galactic plane but not explicitly stated is that the solar system travels clockwise (retrograde) around the galaxy [0]. I find this unexpected as I thought the same "right hand rules" of planetary motion [1] were somehow connected to those of electromagnetism [2] and would apply upwards in scale.

  The Sun follows the solar circle (eccentricity e < 0.1) at a speed of about 
  255 km/s in a clockwise direction when viewed from the galactic north pole at 
  a radius of ≈ 8.34 kpc about the center of the galaxy near Sgr A*, and has 
  only a slight motion, towards the solar apex, relative to the LSR.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_standard_of_rest

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_of_astronomical_bodies

2. https://www.arborsci.com/blogs/cool/three-right-hand-rules-o...

mcswell3• 2 months ago

Go outside on a dark night and look at the Milky Way: you'll see (at the right time of the year) that it's tilted at a large angle to the celestial equator. (There's also the fact that the Earth's axis is tilted relative to the Ecliptic, of course.)

gcanyon• 2 months ago

I'm writing a novella about a trip to Gliese 581 and I'd love to do a similar visualization -- any advice?

arunix• 2 months ago

Altair looks closer than Alpha-Centauri on this map, although it's actually 4 times as far (probably Z axis squashing).

RobotToaster• 2 months ago

I wonder if it's possible to import this data into blender, for excessively accurate space backgrounds.

saxatalis• 2 months ago

I'm also looking to do some personal projects with the Gaia DR3 release! Do you have any general recommendations for working with/trimming down such a huge dataset (e.g. Python libraries that can help)?

royal__2• 2 months ago

Love it. The grid is cool but I think it needs to be more transparent.

arkaic• 2 months ago

Anyone with a gaming rig and an interest in scale of a galaxy should check out elite dangerous.

ge967• 2 months ago

Space engine too

hotsalad• 2 months ago

Looks nice, but is it finished? I don't see a skybox or any of the more detailed information mentioned in the "about" dialog, and I don't see any effect from clicking the buttons along the top.

I allowed WebGL and disabled Enhanced Tracking Protection and my adblocker, and still only the star labels appear.

proton_9• 2 months ago

This was so mesmerising! Will show this to my nieces when they come visit. Kudos!

mndrhdd2• 2 months ago

cool project

mndrhdd2• 2 months ago

Cool project

ianferrel• 2 months ago

Why is the path curved at the start?

didgetmaster2• 2 months ago

Wow. I knew that astronomers had mapped and measured a large number of stars in our galaxy; but I had no idea that the number was close to 2 billion.

paol_taja• 2 months ago

Why does it show the asteroid belt and not the Kuiper belt?

beepbooptheory• 2 months ago

If, like me, you have an older android and are running Firefox, do not open this site!

malbs• 2 months ago

This is great. Nice work.

The galaxy explorer/map in Elite: Dangerous is pretty good, I wish they would produce a stand-alone application of just the galaxy map, whether it's even close to correct or not, who knows, but it's enjoyable just to pretend you can move instantly between star systems and go exploringthe galaxy

ceheaaf2• 2 months ago

For anyone who enjoys this, exploration in "Elite: Dangerous" (for which you need to be neither elite nor dangerous, exploration is peaceful) might be enjoyable for you as well.

From the wiki: Elite Dangerous has a 1:1 scale simulation of the Milky Way galaxy based on real-life scientific principles, scientific data and theories. It includes around 400 billion star systems, modeled on actual galactic charts. Planets and moons rotate and orbit with 1:1 scale in real-time, thus constantly changing a system's environment

https://elite-dangerous.fandom.com/wiki/Galaxy

tenuousemphasis• 2 months ago

Elite would be a great game if it wasn't for the frustrating and terrible game design.

hgoel6• 2 months ago

It's been a long time since I played, but I don't recall the motion of the planets mattering much. Supercruise lets you move fast enough that planets and moons that move enough to be noticeable are very easy to get to regardless.

ceheaaf2• 2 months ago

It watching the starscape change around me as I jumped from system to system, actually seeing formations and nebulae in the distance and being able to move toward, around, into them, which made it feel alive to me. I agree the planets moving doesn't really matter on a gameplay timescale.

I was completely immersed - it was a good way to spend a few days during lockdowns :)

a1o• 2 months ago

This is pretty cool. Has anyone ever seen a diy star projector for the home? Most of these toy star projectors like the Sega Homestar require placing the projector at the center of the room to point up. At the same time most of the small active projectors (like for movies) require a screen for the image to be better seen (they aren’t very bright). Ideally I would like something that could autocorrect the dimensions of things on the surface, so it would project distorted in a way that it would visually look non-distorted and also I would be looking for the cheapest projector that still manage a good bright for stars during the night, without requiring to put a screen on the home ceiling.

I’ve seen proper star projectors from Zeiss but my ceiling is not a dome - plus expensive and requires infinite amounts of power..

aslatter• 2 months ago

What is this supposed to be about? The link looks like some sort of star-chart, but I don't see where to get an explanation.

IAmBroom2• 2 months ago

A star-chart that is part of the scene furniture in the popular movie "Project Hail Mary".

md224• 2 months ago

If you like space visualizers, NASA has a cool one:

https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/

dwheeler2• 2 months ago

Those interested in this might also like my "Project Hail Mary Stellar Map" at:

https://dwheeler.com/essays/project-hail-mary-map.html

My page shows a stellar map (from the viewpoint of Polaris) and a sky chart showing the key stars from Earth's viewpoint.

Source code (MIT license for my stuff) is at: https://github.com/david-a-wheeler/plot-stars

speleo5• 2 months ago

Thank you so much for the blog post! I credited you in the about page, I used your charts as reference for the Astrophage infection graph view with the Petrova mode. I shared your blog with my friends, it was a great read.

dwheeler2• 2 months ago

Thanks for the credit, I appreciate it! Glad it was helpful.

I wouldn't call it a "blog post" though, it's simply an essay. I update my essay whenever I decide it needs updating, and "blog posts" are usually chronological and fixed in time once posted.

Take care!

JoeDaDude• 2 months ago

Cool! How would navigation actually work? Dead reckoning? Inertial? Stellar reference? Pulsar navigation?

Also, the dashed red line is --- SPOILER ALERT! ---- only part of the trajectory in the film, as there is another leg of the voyage not shown.

jinushaun• 2 months ago

This is amazing and even works on a phone. Controls are intuitive and no bugs or glitches. Incredible.

addybojangles• 2 months ago

Super cool, I'm like 2 hours away from finishing the audiobook and it has been STELLAR (had to).

sidharthshrvstv• 2 months ago

That is super cool!

tjpnz• 2 months ago

Moving up or down relative to the Solar System's plane takes an insane amount of Delta V and with our technology would require getting a gravity assist from the Sun. But with astrophage that problem goes away.

Testuser8403• 2 months ago

This is a test comment

multimax• 2 months ago

Awesome work!

xiaoluolyg• 2 months ago

really cool, can we hot-plug in our own map?

martzoukos• 2 months ago

Oh, that doesn't seem so far

snazarov92• 2 months ago

Nice! I love the film

mervinbratic• 2 months ago

Really cool!

_joel• 2 months ago

I started to watch the film last night but only got a bit into it. Feels basically like a "Sunshine" ripoff to me but I'll watch the rest tonight.

lwhi• 2 months ago

I found it annoying .. but I know lots of people who liked it.

zombot• 2 months ago

Are the Pfhor still engaged at Tau Ceti? Is there a bus route to Wolf 359? I have so many questions.

indianbunghole• 2 months ago

Project Hail India – Restroom Navigation Chart

tuvix• 2 months ago

Coming to this thread late but this makes me want to do a star trek one! Going to be way more difficult to parse through all the competing references to location and distance but I guess we’ll see how big of a trekky I am

AlexWasHeree• 2 months ago

very cool concept

killjoywashere• 2 months ago

Where is the Petrova line?!

kittikitti• 2 months ago

This is wonderful, I appreciate the share! This is an incredible simulation based on real-world data. I haven't seen the movie, but I might get it from P2P, are there any scenes that would be enhanced if I pull this up on my phone?

sonnyproto• 2 months ago

This movie is one of the greatest movies of all time

KetoManx64• 2 months ago

What a fantastic visualization. I've read through the Bobiverse series twice at this point and remember all these different star systems from the books (Epsilon Eridani,Tau Ceti, Tau Ceti, etc,) but I've never seen a visualization of where they're located and didn't realize just how much I've wanted something like this until I saw it.

mujib77• 2 months ago

Very Cool! What was the hardest part creating it?

xtiansimon• 2 months ago

Looks like the desktop game Homeworld. (One of my all-time favs.)

mcswell3• 2 months ago

On Vivaldi (a chromium-based browser), it just hangs at the initialization phase. I tried it on Firefox, and of course it comes right up.

Project Hail Mary – Stellar Navigation Chart

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