Hello everyone,

I arrived here in desperation of trying to find a contact for a mapping and math expert and guru.

My background is in Planetarium technology and optical mechanical engneering. Mapping is a different world.

I design planetarium projectors, and when I am not doing that I am usually playing Role Playing Games, like The Elder Scrolls and Fallout.

I live in a small town in Oregon in the United States.

I came here hoping to learn how to map spherical coordinates to a truncated Icosahedron (soccer ball shape), in order to make 32 individual slides of the night sky.
This will involve taking data from a star catalog like Hipparcos or Tycho, and incorporating it into code wherein a CNC can plot the locations of stars in x y, and adjust the magnitude of stars in z. Getting the cnc to respond to the input is no problem. But accurately (as practical) converting spherical coordinates into a flattened 2D image is beyond my knowledge.

If anyone is familiar with this I would be tremendously grateful for any assistance.