Not necessarily a Poser-specific question, but a 3D question in general. Does anybody know where I can find an accurate, realistic 3D starmap/HDRI? I'd imagine that should be something that's easy to come by, but I guess I just don't know where to look!

I should probably clarify what I'm talking about, too. I know there are tons of 2D space backgrounds out there and I know there are plenty of tutorials on how to create your own. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm also not looking for "stylized" starmaps, like ones with big purple nebulas and all that science fictiony jazz, which is mostly what I've been able to find. I'm looking for just a plain old 3D HDRI or spherical map that accurately represents the stars more or less the way they'd look to an astronaut puttering about the solar system.

Any ideas/suggestions?

This is Not what you asked for, but maybe someone else can create an easy way to use.  It is accurate though

http://home.arcor-online.de/axel.mellinger/

Bill

Basically, the best I've been able to do is patch stuff together using programs like Google Sky or the Smithsonian's Digital Universe, but I just can't believe no one's bothered to put together an actual sphere map, given the available source material. That would make life so much easier!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Tycho_catalog_skymap_v2.0_%28threshold_magnitude_3.0,_high-res%29.jpg

http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/starfield/

http://jermi.dyndns.org/~jermi/Portfolio2007/

You've asked for an oxymoron. "Good" and "Realistic".

It's like asking for a "good realistic" map. If it's a map, it's not going to be realistic because it HAS to remove details in the landscape for clarity. Otherwise it's useless as a map.
 If you want to try an navigate solely by satellite photos, good luck.
Realistic space is an immense amount of black with pin pricks of light in it.
What we usually think of as "good" star maps have an immense amount of filtered details. Filtered to make visible what ordinarily cannot be seen, and filtered to remove noise that or details that are not reverent to the information we are trying to comprehend.

Wrong meaning of map; a texture map for a skydome (or sphere)  is what is being referred to...

Quote - Wrong meaning of map; a texture map for a skydome (or sphere)  is what is being referred to...

I beg to differ. Given the technical limits of the source material, to get a "good" and "realistic" skydome image map would still require a traditional "mapping" of the sky to generate the source imagery,

That information would be dependent on the time of year, and even the decade you were trying to represent.
A realistic star map from 1750 would be radically different from a 2013, if "realism" is your goal.

Then you would also have to account for only the visible light spectrum eliminating all the pretty nebulas and other stuff that most people associate with a "good" star map.

Now you need to add in atmospherics for the appropriate season, and location on Earth you are trying to "realistically" emulate a view from.

I could go on and on with technical details about making an accurate "realistic" star map in the first place.

The point was, what is "realistic" and "good" to the end user.

As some who has built scale solar systems in several 3D apps, and who wrestles with Lagrangian point mathematics in his sci-fi writing, I'm sure my definition of "realistic" is VASTLY more complicated than most peoples requirements.

If say… you just want to be able to point out a constellation, your relative amount of realism is probably much less.

I'm that guy who had no problem with Spock yelling "Khan" in the last Star Trek Movie, but was pissed that Praxis was already shattered, and it's orbit around Klingon was impossibly close. :-D

The Doctor: "Do you understand that the type IIA 10-dimensional superstring theory is actually a compactified 11-dimensional supermembrane theory in which the fundamental supermembrane is identified with the soltionic membrane of 11-dimensional supergravity, and that charged extreme black holes of the 10-dimensional type IIA string theory are interpreted as the Kaluza-Klein modes of 11-dimensional supergravity and the dual sixbranes as the analogue of Kaluza-Klein monopoles and that all other p-brane solutions of the type IIA superstring theory are derived from the 11-dimensional membrane and its magnetic dual fivebrane soliton?"

Me: "Of course. Pfft."

The Doctor: "Well it's nothing like that."

Me: "Oh."

Quote - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Tycho_catalog_skymap_v2.0_%28threshold_magnitude_3.0,_high-res%29.jpg

http://paulbourke.net/miscellaneous/starfield/

http://jermi.dyndns.org/~jermi/Portfolio2007/

Cool, thanks! Those look excellent! I'll have to give them a try; may need to tweek them a bit, but that's pretty much what I was looking for.

@Joe: I was basically just looking for an accurate depiction of what space would look like in outer space, not a true "map," in the cartological sense. And yes, I'm aware that all that stuff moves over time, but I'm not that obsessive compulsive!

Quote - @Joe: I was basically just looking for an accurate depiction of what space would look like in outer space, not a true "map," in the cartological sense. And yes, I'm aware that all that stuff moves over time, but I'm not that obsessive compulsive!

Glad you found what you are looking for. :-D

What about the equivalent to Google Earth.

Right now the name escapes me but I have it on my phone and it'srealistic

Google Sky. It's a decent option for a 2D background, with a little bit of postwork maybe.