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.

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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.

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Why the galaxy pictures from the Webb telescope are pretty cool

The first public picture from the James Webb telescope is kind of cool and all, but you can’t fully appreciate it unless you know what those glowing blobs represent and how they came to be. For Washington Post Opinion, Sergio Peçanha provides context for why NASA’s recent accomplishment is so awesome:

Everything about the Webb telescope is mind-boggling. Ponder this: Humans sent a telescope the size of a tennis court into space and parked it four times farther away than the moon.

There it orbits the sun along with us, just so we can get some pictures.

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A lot of galaxies

NASA released an image from the Webb First Deep Field telescope, which shows a whole lot of galaxies:

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.

We are tiny specks.

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Climate spiral to show temperature change

Say what you will about circular visualization, but the spiral plays. This one from NASA shows global temperature change over time:

The visualization presents monthly global temperature anomalies between the years 1880-2021. These temperatures are based on the GISS Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4), an estimate of global surface temperature change. Anomalies are defined relative to a base period of 1951-1980. The data file used to create this visualization can be accessed here.

This is based on Ed Hawkins’ chart originally from 2016, but watch to the end for some extra sauce.

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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.

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NASA solar probe touched the sun

NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe in 2018 in an effort to explore closer to the sun. The probe recently flew through and out of the Sun’s upper atmosphere to successfully sample particles and magnetic fields. Amazing.

The video above from NASA explains the origins, challenges, and future of the project. I want all government agencies to release videos like this.

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Animated map of microplastics in the ocean

Using estimates based on satellite data, Joshua Stevens for NASA Earth Observatory mapped the concentration of microplastics in the ocean over time:

Researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) recently developed a new method to map the concentration of ocean microplastics around the world. The researchers used data from eight microsatellites that are part of the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission. Radio signals from GPS satellites reflect off the ocean surface, and CYGNSS satellites detect those reflections. Scientists then analyze the signals to measure the roughness of the ocean surface. These measurements provide scientists with a means to derive ocean wind speeds, which is useful for studying phenomena like hurricanes. It turns out that the signals also reveal the presence of plastic.

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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.

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New Orleans power outage seen via satellite imagery

After Hurricane Ida, New Orleans experienced power outages. The NASA Earth Observatory show the outages by comparing night lights on August 31, 2021 against night lights on August 9, 2021:

VIIRS has a low-light sensor—the day/night band—that measures light emissions and reflections. This capability has made it possible to distinguish the intensity, types, and sources of lights and to observe how they change. The data are then processed by the Black Marble team to account for changes in the landscape (such as flooding), the atmosphere, and the Moon phase, and to filter out stray light from sources that are not electric lights.

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