Gigglebit: Explore a ‘Google Map’ of the Milky Way

10 Nov 2014

Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note.

This week science lovers from all fields join together to celebrate Science Week, particularly to reach out to those in primary and secondary schools whose students may want to pursue a career in science when they finish their studies.

A series of events will also be taking place across the country for anyone interested to attend and us here at Siliconrepublic.com will be featuring articles from some of Ireland’s leading researchers and science-mad individuals throughout the week.

In the meantime, this particular journalist’s love of all things space led to a website that does something quite remarkable, that is, map 119,617 nearby stars derived from multiple sources that make up our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

You can even zoom in like you would on Google Maps and see what makes up our galactic neighbourhood.

Be aware that this map only works in the Google Chrome browser so Mozilla and, god forbid, Internet Explorer users, will need to stray to Chrome.

Click the image below to explore the map.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com