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Navigating Exoplanetary Systems in Augmented Reality: Preliminary Insights on ExoAR

Authors Bryson Lawton , Frank Maurer , Daniel Zielasko

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ACM Subject Classification
  • Human-centered computing → Scientific visualization
Keywords
  • Immersive Analytics
  • Data Visualization
  • Astronomy
  • Astrophysics
  • Exoplanet
  • Augmented Reality
  • AR

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Abstract

With thousands of exoplanets now confirmed by space missions such as NASA’s Kepler and TESS, scientific interest and public curiosity about these distant worlds continue to grow. However, current visualization tools for exploring exoplanetary systems often lack sufficient scientific accuracy or interactive features, limiting their educational effectiveness and analytical utility. To help address this gap, we developed ExoAR, an augmented reality tool designed to offer immersive, scientifically sound visualizations of all known exoplanetary systems using data directly sourced from NASA’s Exoplanet Archive. By leveraging augmented reality’s strengths, ExoAR enables users to immerse themselves in interactive, dynamic 3D models of these planetary systems with data-driven representations of planets and their host stars. The application also allows users to adjust various visualization scales independently, a capability designed to aid comprehension of comparative astronomical properties such as orbital mechanics, planetary sizes, and stellar classifications. To begin assessing ExoAR’s potential as an educational and analytical tool and inform future iterations, a pilot user study was conducted. Its findings indicate that participants found ExoAR improved user engagement and spatial understanding compared to NASA’s Eyes on Exoplanets application, a non-immersive exoplanetary system visualization tool. This work-in-progress paper presents these early insights, acknowledges current system limitations, and outlines future directions for more rigorously evaluating and further improving ExoAR’s capabilities for both educational and scientific communities.

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Bryson Lawton, Frank Maurer, and Daniel Zielasko. Navigating Exoplanetary Systems in Augmented Reality: Preliminary Insights on ExoAR. In Advancing Human-Computer Interaction for Space Exploration (SpaceCHI 2025). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 130, pp. 20:1-20:13, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.SpaceCHI.2025.20

Author Details

Bryson Lawton
  • Human-Computer Interaction, Trier University, Germany
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada
Frank Maurer
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Calgary, Canada
Daniel Zielasko
  • Human-Computer Interaction, Trier University, Germany

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