Does anyone know of a good, searchable Universe visualizer?

[Melbourne Guy]

I make use of the 100,000 stars online visualization (https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/) to gain an idea of where stars are in relation to each other but the UI is not designed for anything but simple interactivity. It helps with plots and guestimating spaceship travel times, but it's tedious and error prone because you can't select two points and have all the hard work of distance calculations done for you.

I have tried to plot the nearest known stars to a few hundred light years out in Excel using galactic coordinate system inputs, but Excel is not ideal for 3D visualization, either.

I've not tried Power BI, that may be workable, but I am considering kludging room design software like Sweet Home 3D, where the stars are represented as some kind of furniture in the space.

Before I spend time on that, though, does anyone know of an app or site that does this already?

 

[jedishrfu]

Something like this

https://celestia.space/

https://in-the-sky.org/ngc3d.php

https://windowsreport.com/astronomy-visualization-software/

 

[Melbourne Guy]

Thanks @jedishrfu, I've come across Celestia and in-the-sky before, but your third link has some tools I've not seen before, I'll check them out

 

[Bandersnatch]

To add to the above, there's Digital Universe: https://www.amnh.org/research/hayden-planetarium/digital-universe
There are two visualisers for DU (in the download section): partview and OpenSpace.
Partview has two separate modes: for galactic, and extragalactic data. Lots and lots of filters and datasets. But, frankly, atrocious UI. One absolutely needs to read the manual.
OpenSpace is a recent addition, still in beta. I've yet to try it out.

The GAIA mission has its own visualiser, Gaia Sky: https://zah.uni-heidelberg.de/gaia/outreach/gaiasky/
I >think< it has a feature for drawing distance lines between objects, as I've seen something like that on screenshots. But I don't know how to do it myself.

They're both essentially similar to Celestia, but more powerful (and less user-friendly).But, if I correctly understand your purpose here, you may be better served by a game: Elite Dangerous, IIRC its sales pitch, features accurate positions of some 150k(?) nearby stars and nebulae.
The navigation map is what you would want to look at. It's very well conceived. I think it would provide a much better intuitive understanding of relative locations of different objects than the planetarium-style visualisers listed above. The entire galaxy is divided into cubical grid for ease of navigation. Names, distances, and relative positions are easy to read. On the whole, the user experience is very streamlined. Of all the visualisation software I've tried, I find this one the easiest to grok, even if this isn't its designed purpose.
On the flip side, it doesn't tell you where it stops visualising real-world data and starts generating ersatz stars. As a rule of thumb, if a real-world star has a name, it's correctly represented - but not every star with a name is real (or, the star is real, but the name is made up). And past certain distance it's all procedural. If in doubt, cross-referencing with a database or one of the aforementioned visualisers should clear it up.
The base game is of some vintage already, so it is often heavily discounted (currently ~5EUR on Humble Store).

 

[Melbourne Guy]

Thanks @Bandersnatch, I stopped gaming years ago after burning my brain out so I don't think to look at them, but Elite Dangerous sounds like what I'm after...noting there might be some fudging star names

 

[Strato Incendus]

Hi, just found this thread because I've been looking for something similar.

So far I only knew of Space Engine and Universe Sandbox 2 (both of which haven't been named in this thread yet).

Universe Sandbox is more for simulating specific physics, you can't actually look at e.g. the entire galaxy in one simulation.

That is what Space Engine is for, which can take you to any known location and is constantly being updated. Basically, it's what people interested in the scientific side would probably have wanted from a game like Elite Dangerous - but without the need to only include places you can create interesting gameplay from. :)

In terms of general orientation or a "bird's-eye" view of the galaxy, though, I don't find Space Engine that useful. It's great for getting simulations of close ups of all kinds of planets and stars. But I still needed to resort to static space cartography to get even just a basic idea in which direction from Earth you'd have to travel to get to various star systems that are currently being assumed to have habitable planets.

 

[Melbourne Guy]

But I still needed to resort to static space cartography to get even just a basic idea in which direction from Earth you'd have to travel to get to various star systems that are currently being assumed to have habitable planets.

The 100,000 stars site is kind of okay for that, but the simplistic UI and inability to search is frustrating ☹

 

[Melbourne Guy]

So far I only knew of Space Engine

Just an update, I downloaded SE, @Strato Incendus, it's HUGE, over 1GB, and it installed okay but once I try and do anything, the UI starts flashing crazy colours. I'll try it on another PC when I get some spare time, but this was my fastest one, so that's not encouraging.

I've not tried Universe Sandbox yet.

 

[Strato Incendus]

To be fair, my current laptop is fairly new (autumn 2020). However, I’ve used Space Engine before already, still on my old laptop. That said, I’ve had similar issues with Universe Sandbox 2: When I first bought it, my old laptop could still handle it. But then it received further updates in the meantime, and at some point older or just slightly older computers might no longer be able to keep up.

 

[Melbourne Guy]

at some point older or just slightly older computers might no longer be able to keep up

Sadly true, @Strato Incendus, but it's a 32GB RAM, 1TD M.2 SSD, i7 machine so I really wasn't expecting that!

 

[Strato Incendus]

Mmh, perhaps this update has been recent; I’ll have to start Space Engine on my new laptop again and see whether it can still keep up.