Total Perspective Vortex

Browse galaxies discovered by SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) using WebGL. Let the size of the universe blow your mind :-)

Getting the data

The data is currently not checked into the repo as it is ~80 megabytes. Download the data from CASJobs using something like the following query:

SELECT p.objid, p.ra, p.dec, s.z as redshift
FROM PhotoObj AS p
JOIN SpecObj AS s ON s.bestobjid = p.objid
WHERE s.class='galaxy'
ORDER BY p.objid;

This gives you a raw dump of galactic coordinates (ascension, declination and red shift). Then use the script provided in scripts/spherical_rectangular.py to transform this data into a database than can be used by the webserver.

Compiling the assets

The actual browser needs to be compiled using Webpack. See webpack.config.js.

The front end code mainly depends on Babel (ES6), Lodash, jQuery and of course three.js. Look at package.json for more details.

Hosting

This is just a proof of concept. I have many ideas to actually host this demo online. If you want to collaborate on this, don't hesitate to contact me.