Google likes to flex the power of Chrome from time to time, and the resulting Chrome Experiments are generally delightful and/or informative. Besides being fun to look at, the experiments serve a secondary purpose. Chrome gets put through its HTML5 paces, and developers can see firsthand the advancements being made in Web APIs.
The latest Chrome Experiment is called 100,000 Stars, and the title really does say it all. It’s a visualization of our stellar neighborhood and all the stars that reside in it. It’s actually pretty awe inspiring to see Web APIs rendering thousands of stars.
Users can zoom in from the initial display of stars to get a better look at the stars that surround our own solar system. The focus is on our own solar system so our Sun is at the center, but the program details the locations of all the prominent stars that surround our own solar system. You can also click on each star’s name to get an excerpt from its Wikipedia article.
Finally, the team at Google really puts its WebGL and CSS3D skills to the test with a fantastic close up render of our own Sun.
If you have a few minutes to spare, you should check out Google’s stellar map in more detail. There’s a lot of interesting stuff about our universe just waiting to be learned. It should also be noted that the fantastic music being used in the experiment was composed by Sam Hulick, one of the men responsible for the score in Mass Effect.