Galactic Center VR
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Explore the center of the Milky Way like never before!
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Free trip to the center of our Milky Way galaxy!(Index, Rift, and WMR users: we are working on getting this working on your headsets and would appreciate any help as we only have a Vive. We put a discussion our community board about this: )Done by professional astronomers, this VR experience takes you inside one of their NASA supercomputer simulations to within a few light years of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of our galaxy. Besides the black hole, the simulation shows one of its important feeding sources: stellar winds that are blown into outer space from stars orbiting the black hole. These stellar winds slam into each other, heating the wind material to temperatures that are so hot -- tens of millions of degrees -- that they glow in X-rays. When viewed from Earth, these same X-rays are detected by telescopes in space, in particular NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The stars and their stellar winds are seen by ground-based telescopes in Chile, among other places, but the only way to get a close up view is to go there yourself in this app!In Galactic Center VR, fly around the few-light-year region around Sagittarius A*, seeing the orbiting stars, their stellar winds, and the X-rays they emit. Or scale down the simulation so everything fits within your VR play area, allowing you to walk around the center of our galaxy. View the whole simulation in stellar winds only, X-rays only, or both, as well as check out the contribution from just one stellar wind at a time. There is also a tutorial explaining more about the simulation, which provides non-astronomers some pertinent background information.This app was created by astrophysicists at the Instituto de Astrofísica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, in Santiago.
Patch Notes & Announcements(3)
MINOR500 Years of Animation: Available now!
Major Update: Galactic Center VR now includes 500 years worth of supercomputer simulation data for you to explore. Dubbed Version 2, this is a significant upgrade over the previous version, which only
MAJORNASA Press Release on Galactic Center VR!
The Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA made a press release about "Galactic Center VR" stemming from the presentation of the app by lead developer and IA PUC VR Lab director Dr. Christopher Russell at
MAJORThe Release of Galactic Center VR
Galactic Center VR is now available to play! Developed for the HTC Vive headset, it's completely free! As astronomers (from the Instituto de Astrofísica, PUC de Chile) we quite enjoy outer space. We g
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