Latest blog posts, news, features, and dev stories
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After several months of downtime, we are excited and relieved to announce that the Gaia Sky server is officially back online and accessible to the public!
A few months ago, the University computing center, the URZ, decided to implement a series of precautionary security measures aimed at protecting the university IT network from a cyberattack. One of these measures was to put most IT services behind a VPN network, which rendered our server inaccessible for most users.
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In light of the current server downtime, we are creating this post describing how to get Gaia Sky up and running with the base data package.
Gaia Sky installer – first, you will need to download the installer for Gaia Sky version 3.7.0. Since our server is currently inaccessible, we have made this version available for download at the following link:
Please choose the appropriate installer for your operating system and follow the installation steps as usual.
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It’s been a month now, and unfortunately, our main download server is still offline. We know this is quite frustrating for users, as it is for us too.
For those just catching up: our server, which holds all the Gaia Sky installers, data packs, and docs, is hosted behind a Heidelberg University domain. About a month ago, the university’s IT center detected a widespread security incident and took major preventative action, which included taking our server (and many others) offline.
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We regret to inform our users that our server, hosting Gaia Sky packages, datasets, and documentation, is currently inaccessible from external networks. This is due to precautionary measures taken by the University Computing Center (URZ) at the University of Heidelberg.
For more details on these measures, please refer to the official announcement from the URZ: Precautionary Measures by URZ.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will keep you updated as the situation evolves.
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This post introduces an experimental galaxy generation system currently in development, which generates and visualizes galaxies in real time. By leveraging multiple channels, such as stars, gas, dust, H II regions, and the galactic bulge, the system generates diverse galaxy types, each with distinct structural features.
Below is a preview of this system’s capabilities, showcasing the generated galaxies through a series of images. This is an early look at the technology and a demonstration of how we’re using the power of GPU-based compute shaders to create somewhat realistic galaxies very rapidly. Keep in mind that this is still a work in progress, with many improvements and additional features planned before release.
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Last Saturday, at the 16. Koblenzer Nacht der Technik, we had the opportunity to present Gaia Sky VR to a large and enthusiastic audience. With big queues forming and a constant stream of people eager to try the experience, we were presented with a perfect, real-world test lab. We learned a good amount by watching so many first-time users interact with the cosmos in VR. One lesson became crystal clear: the standard control scheme, while powerful for experienced users, can be a source of confusion during fast-paced public demos.
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Today we publish Gaia Sky 3.7.0. The main point of this release is to fix a show-stopping bug that occurs with the latest version of macOS, code-named Tahoe. On macOS Tahoe, Gaia Sky 3.6.11 crashes at startup due to the operating system hardware information library (oshi) returning nothing when asked for the operating system code name. This has been fixed in 3.7.0. But the fun does not end here, as 3.7.0 is cut from the bleeding edge development branch, so it includes all sorts of new features, QoL improvements, and additional fixes. Read on for more.
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As of today, we have consolidated the three Gaia DR3 black hole datasets (BH1, with key system-gaia-bh1, BH2, with key system-gaia-bh2, and BH3, with key system-gaia-bh3) into a single dataset that contains all three systems. The new dataset is called “Gaia black holes” and has the key system-gaia-bhs.
Below is the link to the new black holes dataset in the resources section. As always, the dataset is already available for download from the datasets manager. We strongly recommend to delete the old system-gaia-bh1|2|3 if you download this new dataset. Otherwise, you’ll end up with duplicated objects.