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RE: Our Stellar Neighborhood
I am not sure whether this a true conformal projection. It was computed as follows
X' = S . X
Y' = S . Y
Z' = 0
where S = R ^ 1.5, and R = sqrt ( X2 + Y2 + Z2) / sqrt (X2 + Y2)
Why power 1.5, well its because if I didn't stars would all appeared clustered around the periphery of the projection. This way the density of stars is preserved across the projection.
I see! Thanks for the detailed info! So you basically created your own projection. I really love this software you're using!
Yeh you can do virtually anything with the built-in Python scripting engine. I used Blender Python to read in the X,Y,Z coords from a file and did the above transformation.
Where did you get the X,Y,Z coords? Observations through some sort of software or available values somewhere on the net?
Actually, I took the list of X,Y,Z from my first reference. But I could have calculated them using Right Ascension, Declination and Distance from one the available catalogs which can be downloaded in column delimited formatted.