content is still in production and may contain factual errors
A guide to the stars near the Sun
Explore real 3D star data, follow guided learning journeys, use it to teach and investigate questions — or see how the whole thing is built. All grounded in measurements from ESA's Gaia mission.
Just curious?
Start with Orion, then watch familiar patterns open into real depth.
Want to understand?
Start with the HR diagram — one of astronomy's most powerful maps.
Teaching a class?
Open investigations designed for inquiry — real data, no fixed answers.
Want to see how it works?
Every step from raw catalogue to rendered star is documented and open.
Explore
Guided journeys through real 3D star data. No prior knowledge needed — start with familiar constellations and see what changes when you place each star at its real distance.
Now live
Begin with Orion, keep the familiar shape in view, and move through the local stars until the flat pattern starts to open into depth.
Go to Explore Jump to: Orion fly-through →Learn
Clear explainers and guided lessons for self-directed learners, students, and educators. Plain-language concepts grounded in real Gaia data — not just pretty pictures, but things you can think with.
Featured lesson
Plot temperature against luminosity and watch the structure of the stellar population emerge from real data.
Open the HR diagramBuild
Source catalogues, data cleaning, spatial indexing, and a browser-based viewer — all documented in human terms. Open, inspectable, and explained so you can understand or extend it.
The dataset
Real distance measurements from ESA's Gaia spacecraft, combined with the Hipparcos survey — merged into a single navigable dataset. All open source.
Read the technical notesFor teaching and inquiry
Use Found in Space with students to ask questions, compare observations, and test ideas using real astronomical data. The lessons are structured enough to use in a classroom, open enough to support genuine investigation.
Every topic ends with questions, not answers. The next steps section collects open research questions that students can pursue using the tools on this site and their own analysis.
Featured experience
A familiar pattern in the night sky becomes an entry point for perspective, parallax, and the fact that stars which look adjacent from Earth may be separated by huge distances.
Featured lesson
Trace the spread of a fictional alien organism through real stars — from Tau Ceti to the Sun — inspired by Andy Weir's Project Hail Mary. Every star position is from the Gaia catalogue.
Featured investigation
Some of the brightest stars in the sky are hundreds of light-years away. Some of the nearest stars are invisible to the naked eye. Use the HR diagram to understand why — and what brightness actually tells you.
About
Found in Space exists because data is a wonderful way to learn about the universe, and the universe is a wonderful way to learn about data. It takes real astronomical measurements, shares the entire process of turning them into something explorable, and uses what emerges to teach — asking questions as often as it provides answers.
