Case study 04
Stellar Motion Mapper
Gaia DR3 mapped as a moving stellar neighborhood.
An Earth-centric reconstruction of a public Gaia DR3 subset, using catalog position and velocity with leapfrog integration to show stellar motion.
Evidence at a glance
- Recognition
- 1st place, Most Significant Scientific Plot, MIT Annual Gaia Hackathon.
- Data
- Public Gaia DR3 subset: the 400 brightest stars within 20 parsecs.
- Caveat
- Interactive reconstruction, not a screenshot of the award figure.
Turn a catalog into a neighborhood.
Right ascension, declination, parallax, proper motion, and radial velocity become Earth-centric position and velocity vectors for the 400 brightest catalog stars within 20 parsecs.
Recognition
The project received first place for Most Significant Scientific Plot at the MIT Annual Gaia Hackathon.
Reconstruction boundary
This is an interactive reconstruction from a public Gaia DR3 subset, not the award figure. Missing radial velocities use a zero radial component, and the time control applies constant-velocity drift rather than an orbital forecast.
Explore the stellar neighborhood
Move through time manually or play the drift, then switch among three semantic viewpoints. The WebGL layer is optional; its static SVG fallback uses the same full catalog.
Checking motion and WebGL support.
Reconstruction from a public Gaia DR3 subset (400 brightest stars within 20 pc), not a screenshot of the award figure. Earth is the origin.