π in the sky ·

If you like space, you will love this. The 2017 π Day art imagines the digits of π as a star catalogue with constellations of extinct animals and plants. The work is featured in the article Pi in the Sky at the Scientific American SA Visual blog.

The Sky, northern hemisphere

The mysterious and incomplete sky is yours in these 100 megapixel and 10 gigapixel maps of the northern celestrial hemisphere.

Included are about 2.4 million stars from the major catalogues (HR, Hipparcos and Tycho-2). In the 10 gigapixel image, the entire 100+ million star UCAC4 catalogue is included. Canonical IAU constellation asterisms are included. About 100,000 deep sky objects are also shown. These are jittered to avoid overlap, which is why some clusters of objects appear as large globules of symbols.

In the 10 gigapixel map, labels are lovingly placed and formatted to include name, catalogue and magnitude data. The 100 megapixel map has no labels.

Stellar and deepsky object annotations taken from Vizier.

▲ Icons for celestial objects.

deepsky

SIMBAD Astronomical Database Wenger et al. (2000) "The SIMBAD astronomical database" A&AS 143,9

VizieR Ochsenbein F., Bauer P., Marcout J., (2000) "The VizieR database of astronomical catalogues", A&AS 143, 221

stars

Yale Bright Star catalogue, Hoffleit, D. and Warren, Jr., W.H., 1991, "The Bright Star Catalog, 5th Revised Edition (Preliminary Version)".

Hipparcos-2 catalogue, "Validation of the new Hipparcos reduction", F. van Leeuwen, A&A, 474, 653-664, (2007).

Tycho-2 catalogue, "The Tycho-2 Catalogue of the 2.5 million brightest stars", E. Høg, C. Fabricius, V.V. Makarov, et al., A&A, 355, L27-L31, (2000).

UCAC4 catalogueZacharias N et al (2010) "The Third US Naval Observatory CCD Astrograph Catalog (UCAC3)" AJ 139, 2184-2199 (2010AJ....139.2184Z; Cat. I/315)