Planets, a Solar System Visualizer

Check out Planets, an interactive solar system visualizer.  It lets you change the focal point so you can see the planetary motions as if you were standing on any of the planets.  A great way to understand retrograde motion.

Thanks Paul, for the link.

Space Debris video

Sticking with the Space Debris theme, the ESA (European Space Agency) has this hi-res video on their website showing how crowded Earth orbit has become from 1968-2000.  Same issue as the image yesterday, that the objects are not to scale.  At this scale you would expect constant collisions, but at actual scale you wouldn't be able to see any objects at all.

In this animation, catalogued space debris are shown accumulating around Earth in 4-year increments, including payloads, rocket bodies, and fragments. While the debris objects are not shown to scale, the representation of their density is accurate.

Space Debris image

Great image from MSNBC PhotoBlog that tries to demonstrate how much space junk we have put into orbit around Earth.  I think the downside of this image is that the satellites aren't to scale.  If they were all this large, they would be running into each other all the time.

If you have Windows, you can see this high-res version with Microsoft HDView, but it doesn't work on a Mac.  I was able to see it with Parallels running on my MacBook.

A computer-generated artist's impression released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depicts an approximation of 12,000 objects in orbit around the Earth. A communications satellite belonging to US company Iridium collided with a defunct Russian military satellite on February 12, 2009.  (ESA via AFP - Getty Images/)

Thanks Karen for sending in the link!

Voyager Infographic video

Voyager from Jaime Arvizu on Vimeo.

Jaime Arvizu, a student at the Vancouver Film School, sent me a link to this infographic video that he and his team mates (Tyler Lemermeyer and Leo Aguiar) created for their Motion Design class.  You can find a high resolution version at Jaime's blog.

Thanks for sending this in Jaime, I love it!

Bio-Suit EVA Infographic Poster

From the Man Vehicle Lab at MIT, an infographic poster from professor Dava Newman and illustrator Cam Brensinger.  The poster shows the technology development in spacesuits and some future design concepts.

Big Blue Marble: Water and Air

Found on infosthetics.com, phiffer.com and boingboing.net

Global water and air volume. Conceptual computer artwork of the total volume of water on Earth (left) and of air in the Earth's atmosphere (right) shown as spheres (blue and pink). The spheres show how finite water and air supplies are. The water sphere measures 1390 kilometers across and has a volume of 1.4 billion cubic kilometers. This includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as ground water, and that in the atmosphere. The air sphere measures 1999 kilometers across and weighs 5140 trillion tonnes. As the atmosphere extends from Earth it becomes less dense. Half of the air lies within the first 5 kilometers of the atmosphere.

Credit: Adam Nieman / Photo Researchers, Inc

I'd love to see one more showing all of the oil in the world.

The original appears to be here at PhotoResearchers.com

Dark Matter distorts light

From NASA.gov, an image depicting how Dark Matter (in red) distorts light from distant galaxies as it travels across the universe.

Explanation: Is the distant universe really what it appears to be? Astronomers hope not. Intervening dark matter, which is normally invisible, might show its presence by distorting images originating in the distance universe, much the way an old window distorts images originating on the other side.

Race to the Moon

Cool poster I found over at historyshots.com shows the altitudes reached by all of the U.S. and Russian launches leading up to the 1969 moon landing.

From 1961 to 1969 the USSR and the United States were locked in a history-making race to land the first person on the moon. This detailed map explains the story of this titanic contest in a clear and informative manner.

Timeline of Space Exploration

Newsweek has a cool interactive timeline showing all of the 150+ missions sent into space. Its organized by year (of course) but also by object of destination (planet/moon/asteroid). You can click on a year and zoom in to see specific dates of each launch. Rolling your mouse over any dot gives you the name and details of the mission.

Found on Information Aesthetics.

Potential Solar Energy

Submitted by a reader (thanks Louis), this infographic is from Good Magazine. Of course there isn't actually a way to capture ALL of the light from the sun, but it is indicative that we should be able to capture more than we do.

Check out this link at Good Magazine for a few other infographics too.