(hackaton) Cosmoscape - Exoplanetary Sky Visualization
📌 Overview
Cosmoscape is an educational web platform developed during the NASA Space Apps Challenge 2024, addressing the Exosky Challenge. This interactive experience transforms astronomical data into immersive visualizations of night skies from 50 confirmed exoplanets.
Our international team (Spain/Italy, ages 21-25) created this platform to:
- Make complex NASA data accessible through creative visualization
- Foster STEM interest in young audiences
- Enable collaborative constellation creation
- Provide downloadable resources for educators
🌟 Key Features
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Celestial Exploration | View 3D-rendered night skies from 50 exoplanets with scientific data overlays |
| Creative Toolkit | Design custom constellations, name them, and share with community |
| Community Features | Vote on user-created constellations, track popular designs |
| Data Interaction | Download star/exoplanet data (CSV) or contribute new datasets |
| Educational Resources | Detailed planetary profiles with habitability indexes and discovery facts |
🛠 Technical Highlights
- Core Stack: Laravel 10 (Backend), Bootstrap 5 (Frontend), MySQL (Database)
- Visual Engine: Three.js for 3D celestial rendering
- Admin Interface: Custom dashboard built with AdminLTE
- Data Pipeline: Coordinate transformation system for exoplanet perspectives
- Security: User authentication with encrypted constellation storage
Innovative Components:
- Constellation metadata compression algorithm
- Real-time voting system with WebSocket integration
- CSV validation engine for user-uploaded data
- Responsive sky viewer with zoom/rotation controls
🌐 Live Exploration
Experience Cosmoscape:
🚀 Educational Impact
This project bridges astronomy and digital creativity by:
- Turning raw coordinates into relatable visual stories
- Encouraging collaborative learning through shared constellation designs
- Providing open-access tools for classroom integration
- Demonstrating real-world applications of 3D web technologies
"Our goal is to make distant worlds feel personal - when users create a constellation from Cosmoscape's sky, they're not just learning astronomy, they're building emotional connections with space." - Development Team