Catalogues and sources

All runtime data is hosted with the application. Import scripts clean source snapshots, normalise identifiers and units, validate references, create binary catalogues or spatial tiles, and update the versioned manifest before deployment.

Current coverage

Layer	Runtime coverage	Scientific treatment
Solar System	Sun, eight planets, selected moons and minor bodies	Local ephemerides and documented orbital providers
Confirmed exoplanets	6,333 planets around 4,747 hosts	NASA composite catalogue facts; illustrative close-up systems
Stellar catalogue	10,000 selected HYG stars	Observed catalogue coordinates with proper-motion support
Constellations	88 modern figures, 644 segments	Cultural line conventions mapped to HYG identifiers
Historical supernovas	6 events and remnants	Documented positions and dates; illustrative visual evolution
Local Group	31 galaxies	Catalogue positions with adapted morphology and size
Nearby Universe	720 galaxies	Static local-volume octree and catalogue-backed overview
Cosmicflows-4	37,730 galaxy groups	Calculated three-dimensional positions from published catalogue fields
Large-scale structures	26,520 positionable detections	Separate cluster, supercluster, wall, basin, attractor, repeller, void, and filament products
Tempel filaments	15,421 spines and 275,599 points	Published spine geometry preserved in a compact binary layer

The Tempel binary is fetched and validated in a dedicated Web Worker at cosmic-web scale. Its six decoded typed-array buffers are transferred back without copying; browsers without Worker support use the same validated loader on the main thread.

The 20 named flow landmarks are not merged into the Tempel network: two walls retain their published representative extents, 15 probabilistic basins use the published Table 2 centres and probabilities, and attractor/repeller symbols mark reconstructed velocity-field extrema. Basin radii are equivalent display radii derived from published volumes, not observed spherical boundaries.

Principal sources

• Astronomy Engine for local planetary and lunar calculations;
• NASA Exoplanet Archive PSCompPars for confirmed exoplanets and hosts;
• HYG Database v4.1 for the compact stellar field;
• Stellarium modern sky culture for constellation figures;
• McConnachie 2012 for Local Group galaxies;
• the Updated Nearby Galaxy Catalog for local-volume galaxies;
• Cosmicflows-4 groups for the outer group layer;
• SDSS DR7 superclusters, BOSS DR12 voids, Planck PSZ2 clusters, and Tempel SDSS DR8 filaments for large-scale structures;
• NASA Visible Earth and other source-specific planetary imagery documented with each bundled texture.

The repository records detailed licences and transformations beside the static datasets and texture assets. Bundled third-party material remains subject to its original licence even though the application source is MIT licensed.

Static manifest

/data/manifest.json is the browser entry point. Every dataset declares an identifier, URL, type, and format where applicable. The loader validates JSON structures and binary headers before exposing data to the engine. A failed optional catalogue produces a development warning without corrupting unrelated layers.

Rebuilding data

The repository includes deterministic Node.js import commands for stars, exoplanets, nearby galaxies, constellations, Cosmicflows groups, cosmic volume, and published structures. Source snapshots are not part of the browser runtime.

cd client
npm run data:stars
npm run data:exoplanets
npm run data:nearby-galaxies
npm run data:cosmic-web
npm run data:cosmic-structures
npm run test:data

Not every import should be run on each application build. Prepared versioned artefacts are committed and validated; import commands are used when intentionally refreshing a source snapshot.

Next: Performance and limits.