A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. Not just the star wars intro, but a true statement if you’re an astronomer. You see, once we start to look deep in space at the more distant objects in the universe, we are actually looking deep in time as well. It all begins with a light year. A light year is not a measure of time, it’s a measure of distance. When you turn on the light in a dark room, the light appears to fill the room instantly. But it actually takes a small amount of time, as light has...
Over the past few years, before heading to Ceres in a landmark rendezvous in March of 2015, the Dawn spacecraft mapped out the surface of the largest asteroid, Vesta. This amazing little applet shows the entire surface of the asteroid with some craters highlighted. Called Vestatrek, it shows all kinds of data from Dawn, including a 3D model of Vesta. Definitely worth the time to geek out. http://vestatrek.jpl.nasa.gov/
I’ve always been a fan of data visualization. We have so much raw data in the world that can reveal incredible information about our Universe, and the only thing stopping us is the time to analyse it all. Sometime data visualizations pop up that really put things into perspective, help us see trends that we didn’t know of before, and offer insights into where we should look in the future. I feel like I find something amazing that someone has produced on a daily basis, and being able to visualize complex data can give anyone a deeper understanding of the...
The Opportunity rover has just about reached it’s 11 year anniversary of it’s 90 day mission puttering around Mars. The actual day is tomorrow since the rover landed on January 25th, 2004. To mark its incredible accomplishment, the imaging team produced a lovely panorama of what the rover would see from its current position on a high point along the rim of endeavour crater. The map below shows the path of Opportunity over its past 11 years, from the Eagle crater, to endurance crater, to Victoria crater, and finally on to the much more massive Endeavour crater, where it currently...
