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. 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. 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.