100,000 STARS

Explore the density and location of 100,000 stars with Chrome’s “100,000 Stars” website.

“100,000 Stars is” the latest experiment from the Google Creative Lab. Using your mouse or trackpad, you can zoom in and out to explore our galaxy. The interactive visualisation of the stellar neighbourhood was created for the Chrome browser and shows the location of 119,617 nearby stars and 87 individually identified stars.

The site offers a view of the solar system and then the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years from Earth before taking in the spectacular view of the 100,000 stellar bodies.

Zooming in reveals the names of the most prominent stars close to our sun. By clicking each name, you can learn more about it and see a digital rendition. Zooming in further shows the relative location of the Oort cloud, the planetary orbits, and finally the Sun.

Users can even zoom out and gaze at the edge of the Milky Way, giving some context of where we are in relation to the galaxy (although Google do remind us to keep in mind that this is an artist’s rendition). 

Video:  Google Chrome Experiments "100,000 Stars" by Google Creative Lab

The “Take a Tour” feature takes you on a short trip to some of the coolest perspectives of the galaxy.

The experiment shows off what HTML 5 can do and makes use of Google Chrome’s support for WebGL, CSS3D, and Web Audio. The music was provided by Sam Hulick, who video game fans may recognize as a composer for the popular space adventure series, Mass Effect.

As you explore this experiment, we hope you share our wonder for how large the galaxy really is,” says Creative Lab’s Aaron Koblin (who, along with Chris Milk, also brought us collaborative art project “The Exquisite Forest”)

“It’s incredible to think that this mist of 100,000 measurable stars is a tiny fraction of the sextillions of stars in the broader universe.”