The WorldWide Telescope uses this exact idea: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/docs/worldwidetelescopeprojectionreference.html#TOASTProjection http://www.worl

The WorldWide Telescope uses this exact idea: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/docs/worldwidetelescopeprojectionreference.html#TOASTProjection http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/docs/worldwidetelescopepro... There are also other interesting spherical tessellations that could be used - one is implemented in Google's S2 geometry library, the other, HEALPix, is used for astronomical datasets: http://s2geometry.io/resources/earthcube http://s2geometry.io/resources/earthcube http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/427976/pdf http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/427976/pdf