StarGateVR

StarGateVR is a tool developed for viewing and manipulating Gaia data on Meta Quest 2 headsets, developed by Immersive Science LLC . The Gaia spacecraft has done an excellent job collecting 3-dimensional positional and velocity information (among other insightful properties) of a great number of stars. One should be able to imagine without too much difficulty how it would be powerful to view that information in a 3-dimensional way, as allowed by virtual reality. Hence the power of StarGateVR.

In addition to allowing one to view Gaia catalogue stars in a variety of 3-dimensional spaces (velocity, positional, etc.) StarGateVR also allows the user to do data filtration within the tool. This is done with the use of an adjustable ellipsoidal filtering tool, known as a gate, which the user can drag and drop over groups of stars to highlight and segregate them out of the main field. These stars remain highlighted as the user switches coordinate axes, allowing for multiple steps of filtering to occur in program. The tool also allows for easy export of csv files containing the gated data.

At present StarGateVR can handle Gaia querries of up to ~700,000 stars fairly comfortably. In recent history StarGateVR has been used in project such as:

• Identifying members of nearby young moving groups
• Evaluating membership of open clusters
• Examining stellar populations at different galactic scale heights
• Verifying the chemical composition of open clusters

Beyond targeted scientific aims, it provides a great data visualization tool for the Gaia catalogue, and has educational potential that is currently under exploration.

Getting StarGateVR to run on your Meta Quest 2 headset is a fairly straightforward task.

The first step is to make sure that your headset has developer mode enabled. To do so you will need to pair your headset with the Meta Quest application on a mobile device. It is important that you enable bluetooth on your mobile device to do so. Once that's, with your headset powered on navigate in the mobile app to Menu, then devices. Select your headset and connect to it. Scrolling down you'll find an icon that says "Developer Mode", select that and then toggle the switch so it is blue (on).

The next component to getting StarGateVR running is to make sure you have the program "SideQuest" installed on your computer.

Here is the link to the installation page for SideQuest

SideQuest will allow you to install StarGateVR onto your headset, as well as upload your Gaia queries and export your data of interest from the tool. Make sure you download the advanced version!

The next step is uploading the StarGateVR apk file to your headset. To do this you will need a copy of StarGateVR. Presently the only way to obtain it is by purchasing the supported version from the developer here.

Once you have obtained the apk, make sure your headset is connected to you machine that runs SideQuest with the appropriate cable. You may need to look into your headset and enable permissions. Once all is well, with SideQuest open you should see a green circle in the top left that says something like "Quest 2" next to it. If there are any issues, the circle will be yellow or red.

If the circle is green, you may proceed with uploading the apk. on the top right side of SideQuest there are several icons. Roughly in the middle is a box with a downword pointing arrow on it. Click this and a file browser should open. Navigate to your StarGateVR apk file, select it, and click OK. SideQuest will then install it to your headset.

You may (and to proceed must) open StarGateVR on your headset at this point. To do so, in the headset navigate to the app library. There is a drop down menu in the top right. Open this and navigate to "Unkown Sources" at the bottom. Click on that and you should see a page with StarGateVR as a clickable option. Open it and enable microphone permission (this is for collaborative mode only).

This will allow SideQuest to access StarGateVR's filepath . In the same area of SideQuest where the download apk burron was is an icon of a file (one to the right of the box with the down arrow). Select the file icon, then select the "Android" file. Next open "Data" then "com.ImmersiveScienceLLC.StarGateVR" and finally "files". You may upload your StarGateVR compatible Gaia query here, as well as download files you manipulate with StarGateVR.

StarGateVR can accept any Gaia query, as long as some formatting is maintained to allowe the program to perform proper coordinate conversions. You will need to use the advanced (ADQL) search on the Gaia Archive to achieve this.

It is a good idea to make an account at Gaia so your queries are saved.

Make sure you download your queries as .csv files.

A sample query is provided below:

SELECT TOP 2000000

--Required parameters

-- ID

gaiadr3.gaia_source.source_id as source_id,

-- Measured Position

gaiadr3.gaia_source.ra as ra,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.dec as dec,
(1 / gaiadr3.gaia_source.parallax)*1000 as dist,

-- Computed Position

gaiadr3.gaia_source.l,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.b,

-- Measured Motion

gaiadr3.gaia_source.pmra as pmra,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.pmdec as pmdec,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.radial_velocity as rv,
--Key source light params for HR diagram
gaiadr3.gaia_source.phot_g_mean_mag as photo_g_mean_mag,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.bp_rp as bp_rp,

--Placeholders to be filled in by StarGateVR

0 as X,
0 as Y,
0 as Z,
0 as U,
0 as V,
0 as W,
0 as absMag,
0 as revAbsMag,
0 as revbp_rp,
0 as zero,
1 as one,

--Optional plot parameters (you can add anything you want here, just give good unique "as" names - it will show up in the .cvs and hence in StarGate)

gaiadr3.gaia_source.phot_rp_mean_mag as photo_rp_mean_mag,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.phot_bp_mean_mag as photo_bp_mean_mag,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.g_rp as g_rp,
gaiadr3.gaia_source.bp_g as bp_g
-- Note: No comma after the last select item

-- Use DR3
FROM gaiadr3.gaia_source
-- For any stars meeting these criteria
WHERE parallax > 20 AND parallax < 200 AND parallax_over_error > 5

End of sample query - do not include this line or anything below it.

The above query is for a sphere of stars centered on the sun out to 50 parsecs. You can see many of the values and columns that StarGateVR requires will be filled by the program when data is imported. Hopefully that offers some assistance in getting started. You can watch my tutorial videos for more on how to navigate and manipulate things inside the tool.

I have put together a series of 10 tutorial videos that cover getting started in the StarGateVR tool, going from basic functionality to some advanced use cases. The full playlist is availible here. You can see the first such tutorial below, make sure to turn up the quality: