paper SpaceXR in HCI 2024

Our “SpaceXR: Virtual Reality and Data Mining for Astronomical Visualization ” paper is accepted at the 26th HCI International Conference.  Washington DC, USA. 29 June – 4 July 2024
Authors: Mikhail Nikolaenko, Ming Tang

Abstract

This paper presents a ” SpaceXR ” project that integrates data science, astronomy, and Virtual Reality (VR) technology to deliver an immersive and interactive educational tool. It is designed to cater to a diverse audience, including students, academics, space enthusiasts, and professionals, offering an easily accessible platform through VR headsets. This VR application offers a data-driven representation of celestial bodies, including planets and the sun within our solar system, guided by data from the NASA and Gaia databases. The VR application empowers users with interactive capabilities encompassing scaling, time manipulation, and object highlighting. The potential applications span from elementary educational contexts, such as teaching the star system in astronomy courses, to advanced astronomical research scenarios, like analyzing spectral data of celestial objects identified by Gaia and NASA. By adhering to emerging software development practices and employing a variety of conceptual frameworks, this project yields a fully immersive, precise, and user-friendly 3D VR application that relies on a real, publicly available database to map celestial objects. 

Check more project details on Solar Systems in VR.