SpaceXR: Virtual Reality and Data Mining for Astronomical Visualization

This paper presents a project named “SpaceXR” that harmonizes data science, astronomy, and Virtual Reality (VR) technology to deliver an immersive and interactive educational tool. It is designed to cater to a diverse audience, including students, academics, space enthusiasts, and professionals, offering an easily accessible platform through VR headsets. This innovative VR application offers a data-driven representation of celestial bodies, including planets and the sun within our solar system, guided by data from the NASA and Gaia databases. The VR application empowers users with interactive capabilities encompassing scaling, time manipulation, and object highlighting. The potential applications span from elementary educational contexts, such as teaching the star system in astronomy courses, to advanced astronomical research scenarios, like analyzing spectral data of celestial objects identified by Gaia and NASA. By adhering to emerging software development practices and employing a variety of conceptual frameworks, this project yields a fully immersive, precise, and user-friendly 3D VR application that relies on accurate, publicly available databases to map celestial objects.