Our universe is full of beautiful surprises. It holds mesmerising galaxies, nebulae, tiny and gigantic stars. The unfathomable length and depth of the universe is always baffling to scientists and of course to us, thus we are always curious to know about these little or still unknown celestial bodies.

Google’s Chrome’s 100,000 Stars — an experiment-cum-site — opens up a little window for the inquisitive minds to see and explore a very beautiful interactive visualisation project, which takes users on a majestic journey through the skies.

100,000 Stars demonstrates the capabilities of WebGL, CSS3D and Web Audio (Technologies that creates 3D in browser), by taking the users to an expedition in a street-view-style of our galaxy.

The site is heavy and takes a couple of minutes to load the first time, once loaded, the first thing users will notice is the soothing, epic soundtrack in the background which feels like one is travelling in the enigmatic universe for real, with options to switch the audio on or off.

Users can take the 100,000 Star tour by clicking the button ‘Tour’, or explore manually by using the mouse wheel to zoom in or out; focus on one or the other stars in the galaxy, and read about the information and names of the stars by click on them along the way.

Plus, users can also click the temperature bar to see which star is hotter or colder in our galaxy. The info and imagery is provided by Nasa, Wikipedia and the European Space Agency (ESA), however, Google Chrome doesn’t guarantee scientific accuracy, thus restricts the users in using the info in interstellar navigation. To take the tour through beautiful galaxy and see the stars visit:

http://stars.chromeexperiments.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, November 5th, 2016