One of the challenges which I knew I would face in this project is deciding which stars (out of hundreds of thousands in our known universe) I would be choosing to focus on. I decided to focus on the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions (二十八宿) which are highlighted in the above picture in orange.

Each of the “Lunar Mansions” represents one constellation in Chinese astronomy and has a Determinative Star which is the “main” star in the constellation. Since I was able to find the corresponding Western star to each of the determinative stars, I decided to start collecting data from there.

I arranged all the stars and their relevant data in the above excel sheet and used some mathematical formulas to calculate their Cartesian (x, y, z) coordinates. After some more tweaking of numbers I came up with the values in the last 3 columns above to input into Processing (:

These are the determinative stars plotted into Processing in 3D format (to take into account all 3 axes). So far I’m still figuring out how to navigate in the 3D space in the way I would like to, I recently discovered a Processing add-on called Peasycam which helps a bit! I’m able to interact with the spheres via my mouse but there is a lot more to consider in terms of adding textures, visual effects and interaction for the media art wall.