PasiphaeVR Prototype

Step inside our Galaxy.

This VR experience combines the Gaia star map with measurements from PASIPHAE, a project that studies the faint “polarization” of starlight—a subtle signature imprinted as light travels through cosmic dust. That dust is gently guided by the Milky Way’s large-scale magnetic field, so the pattern in the light helps us trace how magnetism is arranged in the space between the stars.

In the app you can:

• Fly through a 3D view of the Milky Way built from ~140 million Gaia stars,
• See direction markers on selected stars that show how their light was affected on its journey to us,
• Explore different reconstructions of dust clouds, plus an all-sky dust map for context.

It’s real astronomy data, turned into a place you can explore, revealing the otherwise invisible structure of dust and magnetism that shapes our Galaxy.

The PASIPHAE experiment has been funded by the ERC, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas through a Synergy grant