TheStarDB is a living stellar encyclopedia assembled from public astronomical datasets and open science archives. Every object is rendered live in your browser using STEN, the Star Engine, a custom WebGL renderer that produces spectral-class-accurate stars with animated convection cells, coronal glow, and type-specific visual behavior.
Each object type has a dedicated shader pipeline - from the blue-white fury of O-class supergiants to the silent darkness of stellar black holes.
STEN's geodesic raymarcher simulates real relativistic light bending around compact objects — photon sphere, gravitational lensing, frame dragging, and a physically-modelled accretion disk — computed entirely on the GPU, per frame, at real-time frame rates. No pre-rendered frames. No video playback. Pure WebGL2.
This clip is a screen recording. The live render is fully interactive — drag to orbit, scroll to zoom, select any black hole from the catalog.
The free explorer gives you G-type stars, red dwarfs, white dwarfs, and pulsars — a taste of what STEN can do. A full license opens every stellar class, every compact object, every exotic phenomenon the universe has to offer, rendered live in your browser at real-time frame rates.
No credit card required for free account · Full license unlocks all 16 stellar object types in STEN
No application to download. No driver to install. No sandbox to configure. No account required to explore. STEN is a full stellar renderer built entirely in WebGL2, open a tab, and the stars are already burning.
Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge. Desktop, laptop, Chromebook, tablet. If it has a GPU and a URL bar, it runs STEN. No GPU drivers to configure, no Vulkan, no DirectX. The browser handles all of it automatically.
Full touchscreen navigation built in from the ground up. Zoom, orbit, and select objects with your fingertips. Plug in any controller, Xbox, PlayStation, or generic USB, and navigate the stellar catalog with your thumbstick. No configuration. No drivers. It just works.
A Raspberry Pi or a $60 refurbished mini PC. A cheap touchscreen. A browser pointed at thestardb.org. That is the entire setup for a full astronomy kiosk your students can explore with their hands. No expensive software licenses. No classroom lab subscriptions. No IT department required. STEN runs on hardware that schools already own.
Every stellar class has its own ambient audio signature, white noise for quiet dwarfs, deep magnetic hum for magnetars, crackling plasma for red supergiants. Original ambient music plays throughout. All streamed from the browser. All optimised for looping.
STEN renders physically-modeled stars in real time using a handful of kilobytes of GLSL shader code. Convective cells, limb darkening, chromatic atmospheres, magnetic flares, all computed per-frame on the GPU. No gigabyte asset packs. No streaming textures. The entire renderer loads in seconds.
The TheStarDB API gives developers programmatic access to the full stellar catalog, spectral types, luminosities, distances, proper motion, and more. Build planetarium apps, educational tools, AR overlays, or research pipelines on top of real, structured stellar data. REST-first, JSON everywhere, rate limits that scale with your plan.
STEN (The Star Engine) is available for commercial licensing. Embed the renderer in your educational software, science museum installation, streaming platform, or custom kiosk application. STEN renders stellar objects in real time inside any modern browser, no plugin, no runtime, no backend GPU.
Browse the full stellar catalog, or jump directly into the STEN explorer and render any star in real time.