Universe  ID: 4451

The Alternative Night Sky - Another Time - Another Place

Visualizations by Tom Bridgman Released on August 1, 2017
There is a newer version of this story located here: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4856
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A low-magnitude threshold version of the skymap. The threshold magnitude is 3.0 so the galactic disk is very faint. Good for when you just want the brighter stars and have a wide field of view.
Periodically our group needs to generate visualizations of another location in the galaxy, or another time in the galaxy. For context to make the view more appealing, we might like to include background stars - but showing our standard view of the night sky from Earth just seems not quite right. And then there are some (like this author) who sometimes want to make a big deal about such details, so why don't I just solve the problem.

This texture is built from the Tycho Catalog skymap. The same stars are included, but the brighter stars are repositioned by computing a random offset from their usual positions. This alters the star patterns to less recognizable forms while keeping groups of fainter stars, such as the Milky Way, intact. This technique does keep a number of the dust lanes in the galactic disk intact.
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A higher-magnitude threshold version of the skymap. The threshold magnitude is 4.0 so the galactic plane is fainter and bright stars are smaller than the map above. Better for smaller fields-of-view.
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A high-magnitude threshold (almost all stars visible to the naked eye) version of the skymap. The threshold magnitude is 5.0 so the galactic plane is very bright and bright stars are large. Best for smaller camera fields of view to show fainter stars.
 

Newer Version

An Elsewhere Starfield

Related

The Tycho Catalog Skymap - Version 2.0

Visualization Credits

Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.): Lead Visualizer
Ernie Wright (USRA): Visualizer
Ian Jones (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Technical Support
Laurence Schuler (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Technical Support
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

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https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4451

Data Used:
Hipparcos/Telescope/Hipparcos Catalogue
Database
view all stories where this data set is used
Hipparcos/Telescope/Tycho 2 Catalogue also referred to as: Tycho Catalogue
Database
view all stories where this data set is used
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This item is part of this series:
Astrophysics Stills

Keywords:
SVS >> Sky Map
SVS >> Star
NASA Science >> Universe