Alexander Rulkens
@rulkens.bsky.social
designer, engineer, frontend developer. Creator of https://repper.app. Dabbling with data viz, love patterns! Portfolio: https://rulkens.com
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
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
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
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/
Scroll through from the tiniest organism right up to the largest. All beautifully hand-illustrated by an actual human. neal.fun/size-of-life/
Size of Life
From an amoeba to a blue whale
neal.fun
Absolutely beautiful project. And an amazing wat to present the data. #datavis
Moritz Stefaner / Truth & Beauty@moritzstefaner.bsky.social · 2mo ago✨ New project! ✨ Mapping the hidden infrastructure which connects to >70% of plants, extends root networks up to 100x and reaches a length of 1 BILLION times the distance to the sun 🤯 Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi! Learn all about them here: a-hidden-infrastructure.spun.earth w/ @spun.earth 💚
Working on a realistic planet rendering system, including atmosphere simulation. Here is Saturn!
"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
'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
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.
Zooming out all the way from earth to the edge of the observable universe in Skymap. skymap.rulkens.com #astroviz #dataviz #webgpu
Working on integrating a slime-mold visualization of the cosmic web into skymap.rulkens.com. #webgpu #dataviz
Working on a semi-realistic galaxy renderer in WebGPU for Skymap:
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
Alexander Rulkens
Frontend Design, Light Art, Data Visualization and more.
rulkens.com
making really good progress on the new raytracer – this is with caustics and subsurface scattering turned on
Built skymap last weekend in 4 days: an interactive WebGPU 3D explorer for SDSS, 2MRS, and GLADE galaxy catalogs, running in the browser. No install (Chrome / Edge 113+, Firefox 141+, Safari 26+). Live: skymap.rulkens.com Source: github.com/rulkens/skymap #astrodataviz #astronomy #webgpu
Skymap — Interactive 3D Galaxy Catalog Explorer (WebGPU)
Fly through millions of galaxies in your browser. WebGPU 3D explorer for the SDSS, GLADE, and 2MRS catalogs with cosmic-web filaments.
skymap.rulkens.com
