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, southern hemisphere

Mysterious and incomplete, these 100 megapixel and 10 gigapixel maps of the southern 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.

100 megapixels

▲ 100 megapixel southern celestial hemisphere. No labels. 1.3 million stars, 87,831 and 850 exoplanets.

10 gigapixels

▲ 10 gigapixel northern celestial hemisphere. With labels. Includes everything from the 100 megapixel map but with all stars (69.5 million)

▲ Center of the Milky Way, a ridiculously busy part of the sky—labeling algorithm overwhelmed—including the Pistol Nebula and The Brick.

▲ Sirius is the brightest brightest star in the entire sky. Shiny!

▲ The Triffid Nebula (M20) is in a part of the sky close to the Center Of It All.

▲ Other worlds await. Make yourself at (new) home at one of the more than 4,000 exoplanets.

▲ One of the deep fields. This is the Chandra extended south deep field.

▲ Oh my God, it's full of stars.