3D map of the known universe?

[skrap1r0n]

I was looking at Orion last night for the fisrt time through binoculars and notice dual stars. At first I thought it was the Binoc's doubling the image, then I realized it was his sword belt. I haven't seen it with the naked eye yet, to the nature of the 2 sets of "dual" stars got me to wondering how far apart they were, distance wise. I looked it up in Cartes du Ciel, and it gave me distance for those stars from earth. So I started looking for a 3D map of the stars. Google returned nothing really useful.

Does anyone know if one is available? Has it been done?

I would like to find a 3d model of the universe, If possible, one where you could view the known stars from different perspectives, say in increments of 1 light year jumps.

[jawajedi]

http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/7472/

He has a nifty little program for rendering the nearby stars in relation to Sol. This is a good start I would guess

[skrap1r0n]

thanks, that will be a good start

[QuagmaPhage]

Another program which has been mentioned a lot here is Celestia (http://www.shatters.net/celestia/). It has a 3d model of the galaxy which can be upgraded with more stars if one wish. You can also download extra high resolution pictures of the planets if you have a fast computer with a good graphics card.

[skrap1r0n]

I tink Celestia is what I am looking for, I will have to check it out in more detail tonight at home.

[Bob]

http://anzwers.org/free/universe/12lys.html

[eburacum45]

I certainly second Celestia; but an on-line version of the Hipparchos catalog is available at David Nash's site-
http://www.astronexus.com/3duniv/index.html

if you select the Distant Worlds mapper you will find an on-line map generator which shows the sky from a vast number of stars in our neighbourhood.

[JohnOwens]

I'll third Celestia as well, even though it doesn't work very well for me at home due to my "antiquated" (well, un-supported, anyway) Voodoo5 video card.

Another one would be ChView (http://members.nova.org/~sol/chview/). It was actually developed to help C.J. Cherryh develop her extrasolar civilizations. It doesn't give the pretty eyeball views like Celestia does, but does do a pretty good job of mapping an area from the outside.