iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

John F Wu @jwuphysics.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

By popular demand, I wrote a blog post explaining the web app that I built last week: the Galaxy Manifold. jwuphysics.github.io/blog/2026-10...

A preview of the Galaxy Manifold page at https://galaxy-manifold.github.io, showing the SFR-stellar mass correlation with galaxy image cutouts on a grid.

1152

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I'm starting to add more space missions, like Hubble to Skymap. (skymap.rulkens.com/#focus=body-hubble). All using freely available models. I hope to add JWST soon and visualize its trajectory at the L2 point. #astronomy #dataviz 🔭

A visualization of Hubble floating above the earths surface.

050

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Getting some great shots of Perseverance with my new atmosphere system and 3D terrain. #dataviz #astronomy 🔭 in skymap.rulkens.com. Navigate to Mars and check it out!

Perseverance on the martian surface at sunset

Perseverence on the martian surface, in the distance

The landing area of Perseverance on Mars, with low sun

A close-up of perseverance with the sun behind it.

050

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Working on 3D terrain for Mars in skymap. Quite some work, and pretty tricky getting camera movement to work properly. But it already looks nice with Perseverance! skymap.rulkens.com, #astronomy 🔭 #devlog

Perseverence rendered on the mars surface

A whole view of Mars with a label noting where the Perseverance rover is placed.

052

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

JBGarrity Photography @joegarrity.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The Veil Complex is a supernova remnant; it exploded 8,000 years ago and was 20 times the mass of our Sun. Ancient humans saw it shining as brightly as a crescent moon. High-resolution: app.astrobin.com/i/pf03ad #astrophotography #astronomy #naturephotography #nature #eastcoastkin #photography

2155189

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

JBGarrity Photography @joegarrity.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

The Rosette Nebula is a cloud of cosmic dust and gas. The open star cluster NGC 2244 sits at its center; the hot, young stars ionize its gas, supercharging its glow. High-resolution: app.astrobin.com/i/o3k14i #astrophotography #astronomy #naturephotography #nature #eastcoastkin #photography

961377

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

JBGarrity Photography @joegarrity.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

My 2-panel mosaic of Wolf-Rayet 134 and its surrounding nebulosity. Each panel has about 100 images, 27.5 hrs per panel, roughly 55.5 hrs of integration. High-resolution: app.astrobin.com/i/fvf2rm #astrophotography #astronomy #naturephotography #nature #longexposure #eastcoastkin #photography

12697108

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Here are some nice distorted images of the Large Magellanic Cloud and the Andromeda galaxy.

Large Magellanic Cloud distorted by Sgr A*

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

For the code side of things, I've been inspired by Bruneton 2020 on how to do fast real-time rendering of black holes. Code is ported from WebGL/GLSL to WebGPU/WGSL and released under an MIT license. Here you can see their demo: ebruneton.github.io/black_hole_s...

ebruneton.github.io

Black Hole Shader Demo

010

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

You can now explore Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy in Skymap! You can also see the orbits of the stars orbiting the black hole, with orbital periods sourced from literature.Feedback is very welcome! skymap.rulkens.com#focus=body-s... #astrovis #astronomy 🔭

3195

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Our home planet, with the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy (M83) on the background. Playing around with skymap.rulkens.com #astronomy 🔭 #datavis

050

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Quite happy with the new atmosphere renderer for planets and moons. Here is Titan with haze, and Mars with dust in the air and Earth at sunset. Feel free to explore it in skymap.rulkens.com ! Feedback is very welcome 🙏 #astronomy 🔭 #dataviz

051

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

@stefanpw.bsky.social let me know if you want me to put the tool online for you to play with (still very much a WIP)

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I've switched from the automaton simulation to a simple 2D fluid simulation that I'm using to place dust and HII complexes particles and getting slightly better results now! (Will post examples soon)

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Yeah I agree, it's still really hard for me to find the right noise for the dust particles so their elliptical shape is fully hidden and it comes close to the whispy quality of galaxy noise.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Btw I was watching your videos of galaxy renders in Blender, really cool! I've been trying to get dust to look realistic without resorting to textures from real galaxies to keep things fully procedural, but it is very tricky.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Hey Stefan! I'm using a Reinhardt transform for tone mapping. It's not as aggressive as Aces for example. For a more filmic look I'm also experimenting with ACES. Do you get full white clipping? Then I have to tune my tone map. I want to keep that warm yellow glow.

000

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

ESA Space Science @science.esa.int · 16/09/2025

🐦 Fly through a 3D map of stellar nurseries ✨ Scientists have created the most accurate 3D map of star-formation regions in our Milky Way galaxy, based on data from #ESAGaia. The map extends to a distance of 4000 light-years from us, with the Sun at the centre 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪

318363

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

This is a view of the dust map (emissive splats, fitted to the 2D simulation). The idea is that the simulation is sampled, dust particles are sized and oriented to fill as much as possible of the map, while keeping particle count low. Then, sampling a noise texture for high frequency details.

010

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Most "proper" galaxy simulations produce volumetric fields that are rendered through ray-tracing, but I don't see how that's feasible with my real-time / 60FPS constraint.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Right now I'm using the stochastic self-propagating star formation (SSPSF) automaton described by Gerola & Seiden (1978). I'm running into the limits of what it can produce though, here is an example of the map used to seed dust & star forming regions.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Trying to improve my galaxy renderer. Getting realistic arms, dust lanes, HII complexes and filamentary structures, while keeping it fully interactive is really hard! I'm not quite satisfied with the result. Any tips or help welcome! 🔭 #astronomy #astrovis #webgpu

7152

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

Robert Kosara @eagereyes.org · 21/06/2026

I've built a solargraph simulator using solar irradiation data. Pick a place on Earth, animate the solargraph, draw just one point per hour for analemma view, or switch to panorama mode that projects the solargraph into a virtual sky you can navigate. eagereyes.org/app/solargraph

22810

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Very cool project! I love the scrubbing feature, it feels very natural to use.

010

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Experimenting with navigating around a small wedge from the DESI data. Every point you see here is a galaxy with billions of stars... 🤯🔭 skymap.rulkens.com #astroviz #astronomy #datavis

020

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Here are some other views of Mars. I've been trying to get the atmosphere rendering right as well. Not quite there yet (using Bruneton/Hillaire 2017), but I need per-channel Mie...

010

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Mars is in! A little bit too saturated (I'm aware of it, I need to do some proper calibration of the source textures). But it looks pretty epic! skymap.rulkens.com/#focus=body-mars #astroviz 🔭 Also testing deep linking, so you can link directly! Textures from www.solarsystemscope.com/textures/

120

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

Piccalilli @piccalil.li · 17/12/2025

Scroll through from the tiniest organism right up to the largest. All beautifully hand-illustrated by an actual human. neal.fun/size-of-life/

neal.fun

Size of Life

From an amoeba to a blue whale

0217

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Absolutely beautiful project. And an amazing wat to present the data. #datavis

030

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Working on a realistic planet rendering system, including atmosphere simulation. Here is Saturn!

120

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Working on a realistic earth rendering for skymap. #dataviz #astronomy skymap.rulkens.com

Realistic atmosphere and cloud rendering for earth

210

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I'm an astronomy enthousiast and creative coder, and currently working on a side project, an open source online app to visualize the large scale structures of the universe from real data sources (SDSS, GAIA, Glade) and I'd love to share my work with the community! skymap.rulkens.com

100

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

Seán Doran @theseaning.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

"Crazy Beautiful!" 5,234 images from 2 time-lapse sequences photographed by Sophie Adenot & Jessica Meir on ISS Expedition 74 are repaired, remastered & retimed to create this video of aurora australis with music by Andreas Vollenweider. 11m19s 4K youtu.be/22mTjdmpG1M

16823322

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

Seán Doran @theseaning.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

'The Shining' 2,998 images from a time-lapse sequence photographed by Jessica Meir on ISS Expedition 74 are repaired, remastered & retimed to create this moment of zen, shining satellites & Aurora Australis with music by Andreas Vollenweider. 06m38s 4K youtu.be/_l50gsHbGKo

17224

Reposted by Alexander Rulkens

Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 24/06/2026

This is the most detailed view of the centre of the Milky Way ever acquired—taken by ESA's Euclid space telescope on 23 March 2025. There's about 60 million stars in this view. On *average*, there's about one exoplanet per star. So there's about 60 million planets in this view.

A remarkably dense starfield with deep purple colours at upper left that grade towards more yellowish colours at lower right. There are some dark, irregular spots especially in the lower half of the image.

1020448

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Zooming out all the way from earth to the edge of the observable universe in Skymap. skymap.rulkens.com #astroviz #dataviz #webgpu

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Working on integrating a slime-mold visualization of the cosmic web into skymap.rulkens.com. #webgpu #dataviz

100

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Real-time, running at 120fps on my macbook pro.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Working on a semi-realistic galaxy renderer in WebGPU for Skymap:

130

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I've been finally finding time to work on my personal portfolio. Have a look at it and tell me what you think! rulkens.com

rulkens.com

Alexander Rulkens

Frontend Design, Light Art, Data Visualization and more.

000

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

as runtime shader uniforms, but I can't tell from where I'm standing whether the result is actually homogeneous or just looks plausible. If anyone working in catalog statistics has a few minutes to tell me what's off, that would be amazing! 2/2

010

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Personal-learning project, code is commented to be read (every WebGPU surprise is written up where it bit me). One thing I'm genuinely curious about: getting the volume corrections right. 1/V_max, Schechter LF and HEALPix angular re-weighting are all implemented 1/2 #astrodataviz #astronomy

110

Alexander Rulkens @rulkens.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Up close, dots become DR18 thumbnail cutouts (SDSS) or DSS proxies via CDS hips2fits (2MRS / GLADE). Click to pin metadata: redshift, lookback time, NED link.

100