Explore REAL space using the freeware program ThreeDSpace.

It's available now in a Windows version, but I'm trying to port it again to the Java platform (Not easy considering the math that's behind the program).

A few months ago (03/14/98), I accidentally stumbled over the Hipparcos input catalogue. Hipparcos refers to the Hipparcos satellite, a research satellite launched by the ESA (European Space Agency) to measure the exact position AND the parallax of every star in a 1500 light-year radius around the Sun. As this makes it possible to compute the distances to the nearest stars (all distances up to 300 light-years are quite exact) I have decided to make a program that is able to:

1. Show the actual night sky from every star nearby the Sun. (You can see all the constellations the sun belongs to)
2. Travel between stars using simple commands (Forward, Turn Right, Jump To etc.).
3. Computing distances between stars.
4. Much more I can't think of right at the moment...