I am creating a space sim and I need help locating stars. I already have 30,000 stars mapped out in 3D space. I got this data from the HABHYG database. I also have a panorama of the galaxy:

[attachment=17836:Untitled.png]

This is a low res version so I can post it. I got it from http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso0932a/

I have tried to find a way to identify where the closest 30,000 stars are on this map, but I can't figure it out!

What I want to do is locate them, take them out of the picture and then make a different image (to go over top this one) with the stars in their positions. The reason I need this is that when the player goes from one star to another, the star positions in the field will be different for each star visited.

As a game designer, I would not worry about which 30,000 were nearest. I would merely pick the 100 or so were the most distinguishable, and work with those.

But if I wasted my time typing that, you'd need to consult astronomers instead of game designers. Game designers cannot tell you which 30,000 stars are nearest, or how to figure that out from your 3D data.

The 30,000 is my "wall" for the player. I know not all those will be bright enough to matter, but that's not even the question. I was wondering if someone has done this kind of thing before (maybe for educational purposes) and could tell me, using the image I have, how can I locate those "bright" stars. There MUST be a way.

I have been, and still am, searching the internet for this answer. All the resources have given me different kinds of information about how to "look up in the night sky" to find certain stars/constellations, but none have given me a good way to interpret that info so that I can locate them on the image I have......

Here's an example:

[attachment=17837:Untitled.png]

I can tell that's a galaxy (or cluster), but what is it? If I knew something like that, and the reference to the stars I'm looking for, then I could get the info I needed.

The closest 30,000 stars to what exactly? I assume from Earth since that image is a 360 panoramic mosaic of the Milky Way as seen from Earth. In this case, I recommend downloading Google Earth and using the "Sky" view. This will give you a spherical map of the night sky seen from Earth. It will also give you the names of the stars and other celestial bodies, and clicking on these names will give you their distance from Earth.

Or even better since you're only asking for the nearest 30,000 stars, check out the Chrome Experiment 100,000 Stars, which is a star map of the nearest 100,000 stars that you can explore in 3D.

Hi, have you tried Stellarium at http://www.stellarium.org/ it is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D and gives you positions of thousands of stars, galaxy's ect.

I would think for a map in a space sim you would not want a side view of the galaxis. A top down view where you can see all spiral arms would make a much better map and is what you can mostly see in movies/games.

Ludus, if I could give you more than +1 I would! That was an excellent idea. I think I'm on my way to figuring this out.....