Idea

Planetfinder allows users to browse through the data base of star systems with known planets. The systems can be filtered based on a variety of criteria (solar mass, stars visible from earth, etc.). Users can even (and this is the cool part), zoom into a chosen system and view the planets as orbit the star.

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PlanetFinder

About:

This project was not an original idea by any means. The idea originated from the people from Nasa's PlanetQuest website. They were looking for a visual interface to their database of stars. Sounds like a great project, but after the initial discussion the long wait for funding began.

I decided to create my own PlanetFinder, to run as a discreet application. What interested me most was the technological challenge. Everyting in PlanetFinder is generated from an external database of stars. With the exception of a few graphics everything is procedurally generated, geometry, textures etc.

The result is an online application that has an extremely small footprint, around 87kb.

Currently all of the star position data is faked. I was unable to find the actual information. Hopefully soon I will be able to update the database with actual star data and make PlanetFinder a real application.

The good news is that Nasa funding has come through and the PlanetQuest Site will have it's own planet finding tool.