The experience’s depiction of that planet’s surface as rugged rock outcrops with lava flowing around them (and stashes of diamonds crushed into being by the intense heat) may understate Janssen’s brutal environment—some analyses suggest that its entire surface is molten rock.
Many exoplanets are stuck in inhospitable orbits that make life or just the presence of liquid water impossible, and this stop on the tour brings home Earth’s good fortune. As Seawood put it: “We hit the stellar jackpot.”
Two other stops provided an up-close look at the death throes of stars.
A visit to Betelgeuse showed that the late-stage red supergiant in the constellation Orion was looking distinctly lumpy as it had begun to fuse higher elements. The visit then took us into the future with the star going supernova, putting on a show that no one on Earth has seen for centuries.
The last stop in space took us to just outside the event horizon of Sagittarius A*, the unimaginably enormous black hole at the center of the Milky Way. Starstruck made its most effective use of VR’s potential here; I raised my virtual hand to direct a beam of light toward the black hole, then saw it bend into that inescapable gravity well and shift into the red.
The tour ended by taking us back to a particularly remote corner of Earth and another sky full of stars: Chile’s Atacama Desert, the future site of the Giant Magellan Telescope (SAO is among its founding partners). It depicts that still-under-construction observatory as finished, with its enclosure open and its seven primary mirrors angled up to see a little farther into the Universe.
For a VR connoisseur with an Apple Vision Pro at home, the experience here might not deliver enough technical wow. But if you’re a space nerd or astronomy enthusiast—especially if you can assemble three like-minded friends as an away team to qualify for the group discount and make it less awkward when you walk into each other mid-tour—it provides an engaging escape.