Project Information
- Funding/Details: ESA PRODEX project (Principal investigator)
- Duration: 1. 2. 2026 - 31. 1. 2028
- Website: https://gaia.vislab.si/
Description
Gaia Explorer is a modern, web-based visualization platform designed to enhance the accessibility, outreach, and scientific exploration of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Gaia mission datasets. While desktop applications like Gaia Sky offer powerful visualization capabilities, they suffer from complex setup procedures and platform-specific dependencies that limit their accessibility, especially on mobile devices.
To address these challenges, Gaia Explorer introduces a setup-free, web-based solution. The project features a scalable, low-latency backend and a high-performance frontend powered by modern web standards, specifically WebGPU and WebGL 2.0. By using hierarchical levels of detail, data compression, and on-demand streaming, the platform will render hundreds of millions of stellar objects interactively in real time.
This project benefits a diverse audience, including researchers, educators, science journalists, and the general public, by offering tools for data filtering, grouping, and interactive exploration. Operating as a complementary service to existing ESA tools, Gaia Explorer will bridge the gap between complex astronomical datasets and intuitive web visualization. Ultimately, it prepares the scientific community and public for forthcoming Gaia Data Releases (DR4 and DR5), fostering deeper engagement with the mission’s groundbreaking 3D map of our galaxy.
