785 galaxies, or, a brief tour of the Virgo Cluster

Something I made a while back to help me understand the Virgo galaxy cluster for my PhD, and because I thought it would look nice. Only just got around to rendering it. 785 galaxies with accurate positions, though rendered at 3x actual size for better visibility. I used a python scipt to set things up but had to manually texture each one. 4mb 25 second mpg :
http://www.rhysy.net/Virgo/Virgo%20Cluster.mpg
Much more information and some images at :
http://www.rhysy.net/Virgo/Virgo.mht
(firefox users may need a plugin to view .mht files, sorry).

Impressive.Very nice work.Compliments

Thanks toneddu2000 !

Well that was quite awesome. Reminds you of the scale of things.

Wow that’s quite impressive!
Wouldn’t it be easier to just map an image of the galaxy onto a plane? I guess it probably wouldn’t be that realistic though. I’d be interested to see exactly how you’re generating the galaxies and the rendertimes…

Well, you could map the image onto a plane, and then use Colin Levy’s Camera Mapping tutorial, but it would be very limited.