References & Credits

Universe Finder is built on publicly available astronomy data and open-source software. With gratitude to:

Star & object catalogues

HYG Database — combined Hipparcos, Yale Bright Star and Gliese catalogues; the star positions and distances. Maintained by David Nash / Astronomy Nexus. astronexus.com/hyg
OpenNGC — the Messier, NGC and IC deep-sky catalogue, by Mattia Verga. github.com/mattiaverga/OpenNGC
Stellarium sky cultures — the constellation figure lines (Western). stellarium.org

Object data & imagery

SIMBAD Astronomical Database — CDS, Strasbourg; object identities and properties. simbad.cds.unistra.fr
NASA Image and Video Library — imagery. images.nasa.gov
MAST / STScI — Hubble & JWST archive (observation data). mast.stsci.edu
NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day. apod.nasa.gov

Software

three.js — WebGL 3D rendering. threejs.org
Vite — build tooling. Hosting on Amazon Web Services (S3, CloudFront, Lambda).

All third-party data and imagery remain the property of their respective owners and are used under their terms. NASA material is generally in the public domain; CDS (SIMBAD) and ESA/Gaia-derived data are free to reuse with attribution. If you are a rights holder and have a concern, contact contact@universefinder.com.