100,000 Stars Accurately Modeled in Chrome Experiment

One recent Chrome experiment is impressive for two reasons. One, it's yet another testament of what a modern browser and modern web technologies can do.

Second, it's an accurate 3D representation of the 100,000 stars nearest to us in our galaxy, any amateur astronomer's dream.

Put together by the Google Data Arts Team, the experiment is not yet finished, but is already quite impressive. It uses WebGL for a 3D view of all 100,000 stars nearest to us, along with CSS3D for some of the other graphic elements and the Web Audio API for the sound.

All the stars are plotted at their exact position, as far as we've measured it so far, and are colored according to their nature, i.e. blue stars are blue and so on.

87 well-known stars are named and you can discover them while exploring the virtual galaxy neighborhood. For anyone interested in astronomy, the tool is simply amazing.