High-Level Project Summary
To face the challenge of showing people the capabilities of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), in a simple and interactive way for the non-specialized public, we have developed a prototype of an interactive application, in which the telescope is operated by the user in search of distant stars. , of which through a minigame we will obtain information about each star.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
We have developed an interactive game with Unity Enigne with C# to teach what the JWST is capable of in terms of scanning incoming waves and extracting data about its surrounding stars and further galaxies.
Playing our game is easy, you take control over the JWST and through its mission you can use WASD keys or the built-in gyroscope in the mobile version to look at your surroundings ant spot colorful stars, and when you click on them a minigame screen pops off where you have to make your wave receptor match the incoming signal by changing the amplitude and period of the wave. When both data are correct, green lights appear and you get to see cientyfical information about that start/galaxy.
We were planning on doing different minigames but with less than 48h this is all we can do, we tried our best and we plan on continuing with the project after this hackaton ends because we think this is the optimal way to teach diverse people on this subject and get them to see what this telescope is capable of.
we primarly used Visual studio, Unity Engine (C#) , Paint.NET, Google Drive, Adobe premiere pro, rhinoceros 3D.
Space Agency Data
We have use both, NASA and European Space Agency, to feed us of information, images and resources.
Hackathon Journey
It was not until 1609 that we as humans invented telescopes, and so many years later we had the idea of launching them into space to have a better view of further galaxies, but nowadays when we get amazed by 8K images of stars oublished by NASA that are actually many light years from us, we can do nothing but to dream with exploring them.
We have enjoyed this experience, working together in this project and seeing it take form.
References
"JWST (james webb space telescope)" (https://skfb.ly/o8yLN) by Paul (Sketchfab) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
"Earth Rendering Free" by Zheng Rong via Unity Asset Store
(https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/vfx/shaders/earth-rendering-free-54914)
Earendel image from James Webb Space Telescope via NASA
(https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/main_image_deep_field_smacs0723-5mb.jpg)
Visual studio, Unity Engine, Paint.NET, Google Drive, Adobe premiere pro, rhinoceros 3D.