I used python and blender to precisely position (units are [parsecs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec)!) 10000 stars from the [HYG Database](https://github.com/astronexus/HYG-Database). The star-planes are randomly rotated though, and keep in mind that the center icosphere representing the earth is exaggeratingly big - by a small factor of about 1.5 billion!! The (short and ugly) bit of python script I used to make this visualization is available on [PasteBin](https://pastebin.com/0vhdGz59) if anyone is interested! I am quite happy with the look of this model, stars use a transparent/emissive material mapped to the vertex colors created in blender (from each star "color index" if available in the database), and enhanced with some bloom to create halos... Next ideas: plot 100.000 neighbor stars, and maybe the Milky Way from ESA's [Gaia Archive](http://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/). That'd be really awesome! Music: [Brethren, Arise](http://goo.gl/YmnOAx) by Chris Zabriskie from YouTube Audio Library.