visualizations – Page 3

Everything You Need to Know About the Most Anticipated Solar Eclipse in US History

On August 21st, nearly 100 million Americans will be on the path or within 200 miles of a total solar eclipse

Photograph by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be

On August 21st, for the first time in 99 years, a total solar eclipse will cut through the entire continental United States. This year’s solar eclipse could be the most viewed celestial event in history. [source]

Roughly 12 million people already live in its main path (on August 21, all they have to do is step outside and gaze up) and another 78 to 88 million more Americans live within 200 miles of the eclipse’s trajectory. [source]

Here’s everything you need to know about the 2017 total solar eclipse!

I Want to See a Total Solar Eclipse

– NASA has created an interactive map that lets you find the path of the total solar eclipse closest to you
– You can view and download high-resolution maps by state of the path of the total solar eclipse here (also by NASA)
– NASA has an entire microsite dedicated to the event with tons of information: https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/
– Great American Eclipse also has a TON of information on the event and the best places to view it across the United States
– They also have highly detailed maps and times of the total solar eclipse’s path here

Map by Great American Eclipse

You can see a partial eclipse, where the moon covers only a part of the sun, anywhere in North America. To see a total eclipse, where the moon fully covers the sun for a short few minutes, you must be in the path of totality. The path of totality is a relatively thin ribbon, around 70 miles wide, that will cross the U.S. from West to East. The first point of contact will be at Lincoln Beach, Oregon at 9:05 a.m. PDT. Totality begins there at 10:16 a.m. PDT. Over the next hour and a half, it will cross through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. The total eclipse will end near Charleston, South Carolina at 2:48 p.m. EDT. From there the lunar shadow leaves the United States at 4:09 EDT. Its longest duration will be near Carbondale, Illinois, where the sun will be completely covered for two minutes and 40 seconds. [source]

Map by Great American Eclipse

What’s Going on Exactly?

On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature’s most awe-inspiring sights – a total solar eclipse. This path, where the moon will completely cover the sun and the sun’s tenuous atmosphere – the corona – can be seen, will stretch from Lincoln Beach, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina. [source]

This is a celestial event in which the moon passes between the sun and Earth and blocks all or part of the sun for up to about three hours, from beginning to end, as viewed from a given location. For this eclipse, the longest period when the moon completely blocks the sun from any given location along the path will be about two minutes and 40 seconds. [source]

A total solar eclipse presents a rare opportunity to observe the corona and chromosphere, the two outer most layers of the sun’s atmosphere. Under normal circumstances, the bright yellow surface of the sun, called the photosphere, is the only feature we can observe. But during an eclipse, the moon blocks out that intense light. [source]

The corona is the outer atmosphere of the sun. It is made of tenuous gases and is normally hiding in plain sight, overwhelmed by the bright light of the sun’s photosphere. When the moon blocks the sun’s face during a total solar eclipse, the corona is revealed as a pearly-white halo around the sun. [source]

During a total solar eclipse, the normal rhythms of Earth are disrupted. The sudden blocking of the sun makes the day appear to be night in more ways than just the loss of light. The temperature drops and plants and animals react as if it is dusk – birds can be seen flying home to settle in for sleep in the middle of the day. [source]

Okay Just Tell Me When and Where To Go

How Do I View a Solar Eclipse Safely?

– Looking directly at the sun is unsafe except during the brief total phase of a solar eclipse (“totality”), when the moon entirely blocks the sun’s bright face, which will happen only within the narrow path of totality

– The only safe way to look directly at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun is through special-purpose solar filters, such as “eclipse glasses” or hand-held solar viewers. Homemade filters or ordinary sunglasses, even very dark ones, are not safe for looking at the sun; they transmit thousands of times too much sunlight

– Refer to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Reputable Vendors of Solar Filters & Viewers page for a list of manufacturers and authorized dealers of eclipse glasses and handheld solar viewers verified to be compliant with the ISO 12312-2 international safety standard for such products

– Always inspect your solar filter before use; if scratched or damaged, discard it.

– Always supervise children using solar filters

– Stand still and cover your eyes with your eclipse glasses or solar viewer before looking up at the bright sun. After looking at the sun, turn away and remove your filter — do not remove it while looking at the sun

– Do not look at the uneclipsed or partially eclipsed sun through an unfiltered camera, telescope, binoculars, or other optical device

– Similarly, do not look at the sun through a camera, a telescope, binoculars, or any other optical device while using your eclipse glasses or hand-held solar viewer — the concentrated solar rays will damage the filter and enter your eye(s), causing serious injury

– If you are within the path of totality, remove your solar filter only when the moon completely covers the sun’s bright face and it suddenly gets quite dark. Experience totality, then, as soon as the bright sun begins to reappear, replace your solar viewer to look at the remaining partial phases

– Outside the path of totality, you must always use a safe solar filter to view the sun directly

– If you normally wear eyeglasses, keep them on. Put your eclipse glasses on over them, or hold your handheld viewer in front of them

– Visit NASA for complete safety and eclipse viewing information

I’m busy that day, when can I see the next Total Solar Eclipse in the US?

I still don’t see what the big deal is

In a recent conversation with VOX, Ernie Wright, who creates data visualizations and eclipse maps for NASA summed it up perfectly:

You suddenly feel as though you can see the clockwork of the solar system. Where you think you lived doesn’t look like the same place anymore. We kind of know — in the back of our minds — that we live in a giant ball and it revolves around a hot ball of gas, and we’re floating in space. But you don’t really believe it until you see something like a total solar eclipse, where everything is all lined up and you go whoaaa. Other planets pop out. You got instant nighttime. And you can see Mercury and Venus usually. And sometimes Mars and Jupiter. … It looks like the pictures from the textbook. It’s not entirely a science thing anymore. … It’s mostly a thing where you have a better appreciation of where you are in the solar system. [source]

Photograph by Luc Viatour / https://Lucnix.be

In Math, Profs Use This Puzzle To Teach a Valuable Lesson About Problem Solving

Can you solve the missing square puzzle?

Graphic by Krauss

The missing square puzzle is an optical illusion used in mathematics classes to help students reason about geometrical figures; or rather to teach them not to reason using figures, but to use only textual descriptions and the axioms of geometry.

It depicts two arrangements made of similar shapes in slightly different configurations. Each apparently forms a 13×5 right-angled triangle, but one has a 1×1 hole in it. [source]

Graphic by Trekky0623

The key to the puzzle is the fact that neither of the 13×5 “triangles” is truly a triangle, because what appears to be the hypotenuse is bent. In other words, the “hypotenuse” does not maintain a consistent slope, even though it may appear that way to the human eye. [source]

Graphic by Krauss

According to Martin Gardner, this particular puzzle was invented by a New York City amateur magician, Paul Curry, in 1953. However, the principle of a dissection paradox has been known since the start of the 16th century. [source]

Graphic by Krauss

The Most Misspelled Words in the United States According to Google

The Google Trends team made a map of the top searched ‘how to spell _____’ queries in 2017 by US state

The research team at Google Trends recently put together this map that shows the most misspelled words in the US by state.

The data is based on the top searched query for “how to spell _________” from January 1st – April 30th, 2017. I love that ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ was the most searched word in two states. Words such as ‘tomorrow’, ‘maintenance’, ‘pneumonia’, ‘beautiful’ and ‘chihuahua’ made multiple appearances while short words like ‘sense’, ‘liar’ and ‘nanny’ may surprise some.

[via Google Trends on Twitter]

15 Subway Maps Compared to Their Actual Geography

Reddit community ‘Data is Beautiful’ created a series of animations comparing subway maps to their actual geography

The subreddit r/DataIsBeautiful is one of the most popular communities on reddit and its members have become well-known for creating original and engaging content that helps us all make better sense of the world.

A recent post by vinnivinnivinni that recently went viral showed an animated comparison of the Berlin subway map vs its actual geography.

The post inspired a lot of other community members to create equivalent maps for cities around the world and now most of the major subway systems have gotten the same animated treatment.

Below you will find 15 animated subway maps compared to their actual geography. You can find links to the original post under each image to learn more about how it was created and which source maps were used.

If you haven’t already, be sure to check out r/DataIsBeautiful, but be warned you may spend a lot of time on there!

[via r/DataIsBeautiful]

Visit r/DataIsBeautiful for More!

Moon Calendars for 2017

What the moon will look like every evening for the upcoming year

For all you star gazers, here’s a collection of awesome moon calendars for 2017 that show the different phases of our celestial friend for every evening of the upcoming year.

Most of the calendars below are available as posters or prints, so feel free to click through for more info!

1.

Created by Evans & Sutherland | Lunar Images Rendered by Digistar 6

2.

Created by Annie Axtell | Prints Available

3.

Created by Nate Duval | Prints Available

4.

Calendar via Shivangi

5.

Created by Paris Francine Miller | Prints Available

6.

Created by freepik

The Ultimate Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet for 2017 [Infographic]

A handy cheat sheet/infographic created by Jamie Spencer of Make a Website Hub

Jamie Spencer of Make a Website Hub recently published his annual Social Media Image Sizes Cheat Sheet, and it’s quite handy for any active users of these popular networks.

Spencer even went a step further and created Photoshop templates for each network and you can download the free PSDs on his website.

Created by Jamie Spencer/Make a Website Hub

The Best Illusions of 2016

The winners of the Best Illusion of the Year Contest have been announced and they will boggle your mind!

Since 2005, the Best Illusion of the Year Contest has honored the works of the world’s premier illusion creators in an annual contest that receives submissions from around the world from visual scientists, ophthalmologists, neurologists, and artists that make up the illusion community.

The contest consists of three stages: submission, selection of the Top 10 finalists, and election of the Top 3 winners. Below you will find the winners along with two honourable mentions.

To see all 10 finalists along with the winners from previous years visit: illusionoftheyear.com

1st Place – Motion Integration Unleashed: New Tricks for an Old Dog
Mathew T. Harrison and Gideon P. Caplovitz, University of Nevada Reno, USA

Previous illusions have demonstrated that drifting Gabors that translate across the visual field can appear to move in the wrong direction (i.e. in a direction that is different than the actual translation). Here we show that configurations of drifting Gabors that are stationary can give rise to dramatic global motion percepts: a rotating square, oscillating chopsticks and rolling waves. Although the Gabors themselves are not changing position, the drifting motion within them causes the illusion that the entire configuration is moving! [source]

2nd Place – Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion
Kokichi Sugihara, Meiji University, Japan

The direct views of the objects and their mirror images generate quite different interpretations of the 3D shapes. They look like vertical cylinders, but their sections appear to be different; in one view they appear to be rectangles, while in the other view they appear to be circles. We cannot correct our interpretations although we logically know that they come from the same objects. Even if the object is rotated in front of a viewer, it is difficult to understand the true shape of the object, and thus the illusion does not disappear. [source]

3rd Place – Silhouette Zoetrope
Christine Veras, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

As an homage to early tropes that have been tricking our senses since the Victorian Era, the Silhouette Zoetrope offers a paradigm shift from the traditional Zoetrope. Not only through the inversion of its structure, but also through the combination between shadow puppet tradition and the early optical toy. The renewal of pre-cinematic optical devices in contemporary times offers a possibility to the public to experience animation beyond the limits of the screen. When the Silhouette Zoetrope is rotated, the slots strobe behind the cutout images, animating them apparently inside the empty slotted cylinder, which creates the illusion of moving silhouettes placed into space. [source]

Finalist – Caught Inside A Bubble
Mark Vergeer, Stuart Anstis and Rob van Lier, University of Leuven, Belgium; Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; UC San Diego, USA

In this illusion you can see colors that are not presented on the screen. An image of colored bull’s eyes is alternated with an image containing different sized greyscale bubbles. Although these bubbles are colorless, they will actually appear to be colored. These illusory colors are the afterimages of the bull’s eye colors. The intriguing thing is that the colors of the bubbles appear to be completely different, depending on the size of the bubble. Each bubble ‘captures’ the afterimage of the bull’s eye color that matches the size of the bubble. One colored image causes multiple, completely different afterimages. [source]

See All Finalists at illusionoftheyear.com!

A Brief History of Alt Music Mapped Like an Early Transistor Radio Circuit Board

A brief history of alternative music mapped out to the circuit board of an early transistor radio by Dorothy Design Studio

UK design studio Dorothy recently unveiled their epic poster: Alternative Love Blueprint – A History of Alternative Music.

Now available as 60 x 80 cm metallic gold screen print on 120gsm keaykolour navy blue uncoated paper; it shows a ‘history of alternative and independent music mapped out to the circuit board of an early transistor radio.’

The ambitious poster celebrates over 300 musicians, artists, managers, and producers whom they believe have been integral to the evolution of alt music scene.

Dorothy’s previous music poster tackled the vast universe of electronic music and it’s equally amazing. If you want to see a zoomable version of the poster head over to Wired.

For prints visit wearedorothy.com

[via Wired]

DOROTHY
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Buy Print

An Interactive Map of Every Cargo Ship in the World in 2012

The heavy lifters of the global economy in motion

Map by Kiln

Using over 250 million data points from the UCL Energy Institute (UCL EI), Kiln, a London-based data visualisation and digital journalism studio, created the incredible interactive map embedded below.

The map displays movements of the global merchant fleet over the course of 2012, overlaid on a bathymetric map. You can also see statistics such as a counter for emitted CO2 (in thousand tonnes) and maximum freight carried by the represented vessels (varying units).

The merchant fleet is divided into five categories, each of which has a filter and a CO2 and freight counter for the hour shown on the clock. The ship types and units are as follows:

– Container (e.g. manufactured goods): number of container slots equivalent to 20 feet (i.e. a 40-foot container takes two slots)
– Dry bulk (e.g. coal, aggregates): combined weight of cargo, fuel, water, provisions, passengers and crew a vessel can carry, measured in thousand tonnes
– Tanker (e.g. oil, chemicals): same as dry bulk
– Gas bulk (e.g. liquified natural gas): capacity for gases, measured in cubic metres
– Vehicles (e.g. cars): same as dry bulk

To see a full screen version of the map embedded below visit www.shipmap.org. You can also find some additional information on the map below.

[via Digg]

Created by London-based data visualisation studio Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute

Why do ships sometimes appear to move across land?

In some cases this is because there are ships navigating via canals or rivers that aren’t visible on the map. Generally, though, this effect is an artefact of animating a ship between two recorded positions with missing data between, especially when the positions are separated by a narrow strip of land. We may develop the map to remove this effect in the future.

Why are there fewer ships visible in the first part of the year?

Unfortunately the data we are using for the map is incomplete for the first few months of the year: roughly January to April.

How was the map created?

UCL EI took data showing location and speed of ships and cross-checked it with another database to get the vessel characteristics, such as engine type and hull measurements. With this information they were able to compute the CO2 emissions for each observed hour, following the approach laid out in the Third IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2014. Kiln took the resulting dataset and visualized it with WebGL on top of a specially created base map, which shows bathymetry (ocean depth), based on the GEBCO_2014 Grid (version 20150318), as well as continents and major rivers from Natural Earth.

Where did you get the data and who paid?

Our data sources for shipping positions are exactEarth for AIS data (location/speed) and Clarksons Research UK World Fleet Register (static vessel information). We are very grateful to our funders, the European Climate Foundation.

Canada Mapped by Trails, Roads, Streets and Highways

A detailed look at Canada’s “circulatory system”

Data lover and Geography PhD candidate Robbi Bishop-Taylor uses open-source GIS software to generate high-resolution maps of the world. In a recent project, Bishop-Taylor created a high-resolution map of Canada’s trails, roads, streets and highways; weighted and colored by size (from small unsealed trails and roads in blue to freeways in bright yellow).

The map was created with QGIS using the following datasets: Government of Canada; Natural Resources Canada; Earth Sciences Sector; Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation. 2015. GeoBase – National Road Network (NRN) v12.0. Ottawa, ON: Department of Natural Resources Canada.

The end result reminds me of our own circulatory system, a fitting comparison for a country’s ‘lifeblood’, its transportation system. Not surprisingly, there are more roads on the maps within 200 km (120 miles) of the US border than there are in the remaining 3,800 km (2,400 miles) of Canada to the north.

If you’re interested in high-res prints, they are available through Bishop-Taylor’s Etsy Shop, Earth Art Australia. For more interesting maps be sure to check out Earth Art Australia on Facebook and Instagram

[via Earth Art Australia on reddit]

Click any image to see it at a higher resolution