This is one tool I wanted to develop for quite a while but I was never able to find the time for this, until this weekend when I finally got it done.
This is a 3D map of the nearest stars within 16 light years from the earth. There are some tools like that online but non is showing the stars in relationship to some known constellations. I wanted to see the nearest stars as 3D but also placed in a way so if I go out at night I can picture those stars in their right positions, even though most of them are not visible with the naked eye, but at least I can visualize them in their real positions.
For now I have only entered the Big Dipper and Orion but I will be adding more constellations later on. All the constellations are defined in an XML file view-source:
http://bodurov.com/NearestStars/ClientBin/stars.xml so if you want to help me with some other constellations, that would be great. Send me a message.
So here is the link:
http://www.bodurov.com/NearestStars
The source code is also available at:
http://neareststarsvisual.codeplex.com/ but I didn't have much time to structure it well, so please don't expect too much.