The Washington Post looked at the many satellites orbiting our planet. A globe shows a dot for each satellite, which are mostly there to show that there are a lot. I always appreciate dot transitions.
Tags: globe, satellites, space
Tag Archives: space
Posted by in globe, maps, satellites, Space
Real space location of Star Trek and other science fiction
Star Trek and related might be fictional, but they usually reference real stars, planets, and galaxies. Overview Effect mapped, charted, and spreadsheeted the possible real-life locations in space of the fictional places.
Tags: fiction, Overview Effect, space, Star Trek
An illustrated tour of the skies in an elevator
Neal Agarwal is up to his wonderful ridiculousness again. Imagining an elevator that goes up to space, a long scroll through the skies gives you a sense of elevation up until you leave Earth. See how high birds fly, where the wild yak resides, and who was the first person to break the sound barrier in a free fall.
Tags: Neal Agarwal, scale, scrollytelling, space
Posted by in Infographics, Neal Agarwal, scale, scrollytelling, Space
Objects in space headed towards Earth
NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies tracks large objects, such as asteroids, that have passed Earth or are headed towards it. Reuters visualized the nearest objects in the database.
The graphic starts at Earth’s surface, and you get farther away as you scroll down. Speed is plotted on the horizontal, symbols are scaled by the object’s minimum diameter, and yellow indicates objects on the way.
Illustrations after the initial graphic do a good job of providing scale for if any of these objects hit us.
Differing approaches between SpaceX and NASA to sending rockets to the moon
For The Washington Post, William Neff, Aaron Steckelberg, and Christian Davenport show the contrast between NASA and SpaceX using a scrolly tour through 3-D rocket models.
Posted by in 3-d, Infographics, moon, NASA, Space, spacex, Washington Post
Garbage in space
There are thousands of satellites that orbit Earth, with about half of them launched in the past three years. Financial Times shows why that’s a problem in a scrolling piece through space debris:
In 1978, Nasa astrophysicist Donald J Kessler outlined a theory of what would happen if space traffic continues to grow and collisions occur. The debris created by those collisions would skitter off into the paths of other satellites, creating yet more debris.
Over time, Kessler argued, a chain reaction of cascading collisions could one day make low Earth orbit hard to access and even prevent manned spaceflight from leaving Earth: a phenomenon since labelled the “Kessler syndrome”.
Tags: Financial Times, garbage, space
Posted by in Financial Times, garbage, Infographics, Space
Scale of the bigger, more detailed universe
We’ve learned more about the universe since Charles and Ray Eames produced Powers of Ten in 1977, so the BBC made an homage to the film, updating with what we know now. Spoiler alert: the universe is still big.
Posted by in BBC, Infographics, scale, Space
Scale of black holes
I’m not sure there’s any way to really understand the scale of the largest black holes in the universe, but Kurzgesagt gives it a good try.
Tags: black hole, Kurzgesagt, scale, space
Posted by in black hole, Infographics, Kurzgesagt, scale, Space
Launching a telescope to explore the Big Bang
NASA is launching the James Webb Space Telescope on December 22, 2021 with an objective to collect data on light from 13.8 billion light-years away.
Using 3-D models from NASA, Rahul Mukherjee and Lorena Iñiguez Elebee for The Los Angeles Times show how the $10 billion telescope works and how NASA plans to launch the telescope into orbit a million miles from Earth. Nothing to it.
Tags: Los Angeles Times, NASA, space, telescope
Posted by in Infographics, Los Angeles Times, NASA, Space, telescope
A view from the Moon’s south pole
NASA Goddard visualized the point of view from the south pole of the Moon, based on years of data collection to map the Moon’s surface. The result is a data-based time-lapse that shows Earth moving up and down and long shadows because the run shines at a low angle.
It’s a neat contrast to what we see from Earth and makes me wonder what other points of view there are.
Tags: moon, NASA, space, time-lapse
Posted by in Infographics, moon, NASA, Space, time-lapse