Humanity is in dire need of an interactive map of the night sky. The dream is as follows:
First, a trillion-pixel map of the sky, much like Google Earth, but for the heavens above. Anyone on Earth can visit the website, and enter into it several static metrics, among them the coordinates, the zoom factor, and the light spectrum (infrared, ultraviolet, visible, etc).
In response to those parameters, the site will output a complete stellar map corresponding to those variables, which the user can then save as an image to their hard drive.
It sounds simple, but in actuality such a feat of stellar cartography would be both eye-opening and revolutionary. It would require an inspection of the heavens as rigorous as it was costly, both in time and finances. But the consequences would irrevocably change the course of humanity for aeons to come.
So what do you think? Would such project be possible? Would it be worth the effort? I should certainly hope so. I also hope it would henceforth guide humanity's skyward progress, and prove to be yet one more brick upon the foundations of our exploration of the cosmos itself.
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