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Fly through space with Google's new 3D star map

Explore the stars closest to our sun, from your browser.
Written by Tyler Falk, Contributor

Oh, you're not rich enough to be a space tourist? Neither am I. Fortunately, for us, Google has launched a stellar new space visualization that lets us fly through the Milky Way using your web browser.

The new Chrome Experiment, 100,000 Stars, uses data and imagery from NASA and the European Space Agency to create a map of our galaxy and provides information about the stars closest to our sun.

This Google Chrome blog post explains how to use 100,000 Stars:

Using your mouse or trackpad, you can zoom in and out to explore our galaxy. Zooming in reveals the names of the most prominent stars close to our sun – click each name to 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. Zooming out gives you some context for where we are in the Milky Way, although please keep in mind this view is an artist’s rendition. Click the tour button in the upper left for a quick trip to some of the coolest perspectives in the galaxy.

Go explore, here.

Photo: Google/100,000 stars

[h/t Treehugger]

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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