Mini Starcarta update: I’ve improved the fidelity of protoplanetary disks and dust rings around stars. For a good example of one, let’s take a look at Fomalhaut! #space #starcarta #indiedev starcarta.app/o/gNnB

🛰️ Starcarta Update 1.4! ✨ New: - Star focus Stars in multiple systems can be far apart making it difficult to zoom in. Now by clicking on a Star’s name, you can zoom in on that star and its planets. Clicking the Star’s name again toggles you back to the the System. #space #astronomy #indiedev

Recently, JWT studied Trappist-1e’s atmosphere ruling out a Venus or Mars-like atmosphere but leaving water possible for future studies. science.nasa.gov/missions/web... Check it at starcarta.app/o/jkSG - you can also see how all of the 7 discovered planets are less than 1 au from Trappist-1

🛰️ Starcarta update 1.3 is here! ✨ New: - Tags! - Highlight Systems by Tag. - Added 1 AU graph circle to all Systems with planets to show scale. (1/4) #Starcarta #indiedev #astronomy #space starcarta.app

This week’s star is Gliese 163, a red dwarf with at least 3 planets (up to 5). One, Gliese 163c, is a 7-Earth-mass world near the habitable zone. The light we see from it today began its trip 49 years ago, the same year & maybe even day I was born. I think that’s pretty cool! starcarta.app/o/CXJPq

The Habitable Zone of our solar system, which is between 0.99au & 1.70au includes both Earth & Mars (even though Mars is too small to hold enough atmosphere) but excludes the runaway greenhouse Venus. Interestingly, you can see how the Earth is just balanced on the inner edge. starcarta.app/o/B

GL581 is a low-activity, stable M-class star. It has 2 candidate planets well positioned in their HZ, GL581 b & GL581 c. GL581 b is a 6 Me super-earth, zipping around every 5 days, while GL581 c is a more reasonable 2 Me planet, taking 13 days to complete an orbit. starcarta.app/o/JdJCb #astronomy

For a pretty good HZ match, we can check out HD 40307 g, a massive 7 Me super-earth in the habitable zone of its 1 billion year old K-Class star. It’s a great candidate to explore in the future, and not too far away at 42 light years away. starcarta.app/o/CXSGM #space #astronomy

Gliese 667 Cc is also a 4 Me super-earth w/ an orbit right in the middle of its Red Dwarf’s HZ. Gliese 667 Cf, Gliese 667 Ce are not confirmed, but could also be in Gliese 667 C’s HZ. So Gliese 667 C might have multiple habitable worlds, at just 24 light years from Sol. #space starcarta.app/o/CJCWm

Tau Ceti has come up before, checking its HZ shows Tau Ceti e is slightly too close & Tau Ceti f (4 earth mass) is on the outer fringes. However, Tau Ceti f’s orbit dips it in & out of the zone during its 636-day orbit / half-year-long winter if it’s able to hold an atmosphere. starcarta.app/o/hkBp

RK Kopparapu + team’s articles build on & refine the work of Kasting in 1993 to determine where this zone around a star could be. HZs are then determined from the star’s output (ex luminosity), adjusting for its temp as well as (optionally) the mass of the planet. Check them out in starcarta.app

Starcarta release 1.12! Now w/Habitable Zones! So what is a star’s HZ? It’s the space around a star where a rocky planet can have surface water, assuming atmosphere & sufficient gravity. Avoiding either runaway greenhouses or where CO₂ can't keep the planet sufficiently warm. #space #starcarta (1/2)

HD 20781 has 4 known planets (2 Gas Giants and 2 Super-earths) and 9000au away is HD 20782, with at least 1 planet having the single highest eccentricity of all known exoplanets. Have a look at them in 3D on starcarta.app/o/QgvX. (2/2) #astronomy #space #starcarta

Today’s system is HD 20782/HD 20781 which form a twice notable wide-binary system w/2 sunlike stars. Their system is the first found binary where each star has planets, which is unusual as one of the stars tends to disrupt the initial planet-forming disks of their companions. (1/2) #astronomy #space

Starcarta version 1.06 released! 🌟 - URL now shows the system you're with a short code in for easy sharing. System of day: Epsilon Tauri! starcarta.app/?o=RvdN With a great view of the star packed Hyades cluster, is the huge & super bright G-star Ain and planet Amateru. #starcarta #astronomy

So why do stars have multiple names like HD 122303, Gliese 536, HIP 68469, Luyten 979-36, or telephone book entries like Gaia DR1 3657653144944789504? Let's dig into it... starcarta.app?q=HD%20122303 (1/6) #space #starcarta #asronomy

Today’s system is HR 8799. It’s a young, 42 Million y/o F star ~130 ly away. Orbiting it are 4 Jupiter-sized planets which were imaged by Christian Marois and team of the Canadian NRC's 🇨🇦 Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. Check it out in Starcarta starcarta.app/?q=HD%20218396. #space #astronomy

🇨🇦 Celebrating some Canadian science with the star TOI-1452. In 2022, a team at the Université de Montréal discovered a possible “water-world” super-Earth arxiv.org+15cfht.hawaii.edu+15montreal.ctvnews.ca+15 you can check it out on Starcarta: starcarta.app/?q=TOI-1452 #astronomy #exoplanets

Watch OverviewEffekt’s videos, then explore those same stars interactively in Starcarta. (3/3) 🌌 starcarta.app #Starcarta #webgl #space #threejs #indiedev

@OverviewEffekt has been creating beautifully animated videos about real stars, like www.youtube.com/watch?v=elPK... with the added context of the sci-fi stories (like Dune) set in those systems. (2/3) 🌐 overvieweffekt.com #overvieweffect #datavisualization #astronomy

A big inspiration to me when I was building Starcarta was all the sci-fi stories I loved as a child, and imagining a future where we’d need stellar cartography to visit them. (1/3) #Starcarta #scifi #space #indiedev

The new trailer for Project Hail Mary youtu.be/3GPyA7VniTY... looks awesome! And if want to learn more about the actual Tau Ceti, check out starcarta.app?q=tau+ceti #astronomy #projecthailmary

Star Seeker, is now Starcarta. 🛰️ Starcarta Update 1.05 is here! ✨ New: -New Name! -Home toggle: find the Sun’s position from anywhere. -Hover-to-focus: float your mouse over a star name to center on it. With the new name we also have a new home: starcarta.app! #Starcarta #indiedev #astronomy #space

Hmm, apparently Star seeker is also the name of a space themed game coming out in 2026. So should I change my app's name? I'm obviously the little fish here.

Today's system is Iota Ursae Majoris, known as Talitha (shared w/Kappa Ursae Majoris.) It has 4 stars, is about 46 Ly away, and a primary 1.7 times the size of the sun. No planets found, but that's for the best as the two pairs of binaries slowly spiral closer. starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Iota%20Ur...

🚀StarSeeker 1.03 now live 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com Improved planet rings and textures, and orbital mechanics - and if it weren't for @evanthorizon.bsky.social's video, I would still have planets orbiting the sun clockwise >_< . astromony #indiedev #space

🚀 Star Seeker 1.001 up! Let's look at Alpha Leonis 🌟 starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Alpha%20L... This system is home to Regulus, 79 ly away, 11000K, 4x the sun's size & one of the brightest stars in our sky. It has a blue subgiant & white dwarf, with another pair of small stars co-orbiting. #astronomy

Last thing for today: It’s not super common for exoplanets to have formal names, but the Copernicus system (55 Cancri) starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Rho%C2%B9... has 5, named after scientists. (The distances between stars are not to scale, so 55 Cancri B appears closer than it is.) #astronomy #indiedev

In space news: 14 Herculis c has recently been imaged directly phys.org/news/2025-06..., and is notable for having a relatively low temperature. You can see the way the planet’s orbit inclinations cross in the system, instead of lying flat in the same plane here: starseeker.spark72.com/?q=14%20Her.

StarSeeker v0.99 Update! starseeker.spark72.com Since Planet Orbits are in, I’ve been working to get minor & dwarf planets too. The original orbits didn’t capture the eccentricity of objects like Pluto so I’ve added an option to show elliptical or simple orbits, and toggle planets/minor planets.

And service is restored! For a more permanent solution, I'm also looking for any Science/Education/Academic groups that would like to help host this content. Here's Alpha Centauri, the closest system at 4ly away with an exoplanet around the star Proxima. starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Alpha%20C...

Woo! That was a successful update launch yesterday! However, now I've blown through my database server allowance. So hang tight while I find a better backend server. Thank you for trying out my little web app StarSeeker.spark72.com.

☀️ Last stop: e Eridani 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com/?q=e%20Eridani A sunlike G6V star, 10.5ly away. Likely has 3–4 super-Earths. One of them (f) orbits at 1.35 AU—pretty close to Earth and also a debris ring far beyond. Thanks for following along! 6/6

🌱TW Hydrae 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com/?q=TW%20Hydrae Only 8 million years old and surrounded by a protoplanetary disk; the gaps in this disk are likely being carved by new worlds taking shape. 5/6

🌟 Vega 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Alpha%20L... Closer at 25ly, no confirmed planets, but plenty of dust rings. Famous in many cultures, but its disks don’t quite compare to… 4/6

🌀First up: Beta Pictoris 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com/?q=Beta%20Pi... A young A6V star, 64ly away, with 2 planets, inner asteroid belt and a wide outer debris rings. It’s categorized as a “Vega-like” system—so on to… 3/6

✨UI Update: Ring Systems! Planets and stars can now show Saturn-style rings and asteroid belts. I’ve also hand-edited a few systems to highlight cool real-life features. Let’s take a little tour… 🔭 2/6

🚀StarSeeker 0.98 is up! 🔗 starseeker.spark72.com Now showing all 60K stars within 200ly. Search is now an API call, and system data loads on demand—cuts the initial data in half (was ~174MB). Batch processing’s faster too! 1/6 #starseeker #webgl #indiedev #astronomy

Update: I added planetary orbits to StarSeeker! You can start at StarSeeker.spark72.com/?q=The+Sun Sol, and the check out the planets of Tau Ceti, Kepler-444, plus 100s more. The orbits are a schematic representation rather than completely accurate, still using real data to keep the ratios correct.

Using the same patch set-up as 'so now what do we do?' to keep a similar sound, but with a layered approach and less focus on the driving engine of the drums and more loops is another track (as always, a rough demo since I'm here to learn): 'now this' on.soundcloud.com/xt8BUGzJp2oq...

Let's talk about K2-18 and it's two known planets c and b (recently in the news for its atmosphere). The M2.5 red dwarf is half the size/mass of our Sun, warm but not too toasty at 3600K, 124 ly away. K2-18b is 2x 🌎's radius, 9x 🌎's mass and orbits every 33 days. starseeker.spark72.com/?q=K2-18

Now that my DB limit has reset and starseeker.spark72.com is back up I'm switching over to music. I've only been exploring making/uploading music for the past year so each track is more about learning than being perfect. This is 'so now what do we do?' on.soundcloud.com/FAMPzJVELaHr...