This week I took a look at the visualization Star Mapper, which is based on data from the ESA's Hipparcos mission that catalogued stars (Link: https://sci.esa.int/star_mapper/). The data contains measurements of positions, motion, and distances of over 100,000 stars. The star mapper itself contains about 60,000 stars from this catalogue. You can explore the sky based on both apparent and absolute magnitude, plot the stars' magnitude and temperature on a Hertzsprung-Russel diagram, and use the 'Motion' option to see how the stars move through space. You can also toggle star names and constellations into view.
My favorite part of the visualization is the 'Explore' option, which lets the user apply color the appropriate color to all the stars, filter by apparent magnitude, and watch their movement through the sky both in the future and in the past. You can also keep the plots of the constellation as you watch their motion over time - it was interesting to see how 'quickly' the constellations fall out of place, as they are unrecognizable after around 100,000 years or so.
Overall, this visualization is visually pleasing, informative, and fairly easy to use. I found it to be a bit overwhelming initially, but was able to learn more through the 'About' page. I also think it would be nice to be able to click on the main stars, specifically the labelled ones, in order to learn more about them, as a lot of the names are nearly meaningless to me.