Data & Analytics
Astraea Atlas
A NASA-data-driven celestial atlas that turns confirmed exoplanet records into a calm, explorable 3D sky map.
2026 / Data & Analytics / React / Three.js / NASA TAP / TypeScript / Sites
Quick read
A clear breakdown of the product, the reasoning behind it, and the implementation choices that matter.
- Year
- 2026
- Category
- Data & Analytics
- Status
- Live prototype
Overview
Astraea Atlas is an educational web experience built around live NASA Exoplanet Archive data. It uses recorded right ascension and declination to place confirmed worlds on a rotatable celestial globe, then lets people colour and filter the map by measured fields such as discovery year, radius, mass, distance, or detection method.
Why it exists
Exoplanet catalogues are rich but difficult to explore outside a table. The challenge was to make the data spatial and memorable without inventing scientific meaning or turning the experience into a dashboard.
How it works
Astraea Atlas uses a guided globe view with real sky coordinates, bounded archive queries, explicit missing-data treatment, and a small generator model that keeps filters, colour encoding, and future prompt-based configuration on the same validated path.
Built with
React / Three.js / NASA TAP / TypeScript / Sites
What I focused on
- Built a rotatable Three.js celestial globe from verified NASA archive coordinates.
- Added one-at-a-time colour encoding for discovery year, radius, mass, distance, and detection method.
- Kept unmapped and unavailable records visible rather than fabricating positions or values.
- Added a resilient TAP data route with bounded results, normalisation, and offline fallback handling.