This animation by Scott Manley of the Armagh Observatory shows a beautiful view of the past 30 years of asteroid discoveries, using data culled by Ted Bowell and company.
As time passes, asteroids are highlighted white and then colored by how closely they come to our inner solar system. Earth crossers are red, Earth approachers are yellow, and all others are colored green.
What you get is a view of the solar system’s planets and asteroids orbiting the sun and these beautiful sparkles in sky. As automated sky scanning systems come online in the 1990s, we see waves of discoveries. Then starting at the beginning of 2010, we see a discovery pattern as a result of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which has been tasked with mapping all infrared light in the sky.
Watch the full video below.
Pingback: Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010 | VizWorld.com
Pingback: Things I Learned This Week – #35 | dougbelshaw.com/blog
Pingback: Visualisation of Asteroid Discoveries from 1980-2010 | hellokinsella
This makes me feel very small, threatened and amazed all at the same time. I love how the green band gets darker as the earth sweeps past towards the end.
Wow… just wow. Anybody that thinks we’re wasting our time planning for an eventual asteroid impact should watch this. What a chaotic and busy place the solar system is especially since space is supposed to be “empty”.
Screw going to the Gym.
This is pretty amazing.
very cool. tho watching this whilst sipping my morning cuppa, seems like a special brownie would be more a propos.
This is truly awesome and frightening at the same time. Seen this way, it’s truly amazing that we haven’t had more serious impacts then we have had. Incredible!
beautiful! to create so much debris I think 2 planets in elliptical orbits collided a very long time ago.
This makes me happy to be a child of such a universe, well, a tad nervous but delighted nonetheless.