A developer has built an interactive star map inspired by the one featured in the book Project Hail Mary, and it uses real astronomical data to back it up. The book was recently developed into a movie of the same name, and it’s one of the best sci-fi movies of the year.
The project was shared on Hacker News, where Val, who developed this project, explained that the map was built using ESA’s GAIA DR3 dataset, a star survey that mapped over 1.8 billion stars in our neighborhood of the Milky Way. The data includes star positions, colors, spectra, proper motion, and more, making this far more than a stylistic fan project.
How accurate is it?
I don’t know much about astrophysics, but by all accounts, the model seems to be pretty accurate. The developer wrote a Python script that renders all 1.8 billion stars into custom images, which are used to build the skybox.
Star positions and colors are pulled directly from the GAIA data, with only a handful of bright stars that are not in the dataset being handled separately. The result is a mostly realistic map of our local star system.
Even if the model is not accurate, it’s incredible to see such projects come to life. If you loved the book or the movie, you are going to have a fun time on the website.
What can you do with it?
The map includes a Color view and a Petrova view. The Color view shows accurate star colors based on the GAIA data, while the Petrova view shows the path stars were infected by Astrophage, straight from the story. If you have read the book or seen the movie, you will appreciate just how thoughtfully this has been put together.
The developer also credited David A. Wheeler’s blog post, which goes into detail about the Astrophage infection path, for helping nail that part of the project.
If you enjoy open data projects, the GAIA DR3 dataset is publicly available through ESA’s Gaia Archive, and this project is a great example of how creative and stunning a well-executed open data project can be.