Mapping Equinoxes - Understanding Seasonal Change from a Perspective in space

This is both a nice textual and visual explanation of the changes in season.

Quick "Cut & Paste" Highlights:
" ....One of the most frequently misunderstood concepts in science is the reason for Earth’s seasons. As we experience the September equinox today .... we thought we’d offer a space-based view of what’s going on.... The shape of this line between night and day varies with the seasons, which means different lengths of days and differing amounts of warming sunshine...."

"....Of course, it is not the Sun that is moving north or south through the seasons, but a change in the orientation and angles between the Earth and its nearest star. The axis of the Earth is tilted 23.5 degrees relative to the Sun and the ecliptic plane. The axis is tilted away from the Sun at the December solstice and toward the Sun at the June solstice, spreading more and less light on each hemisphere. At the equinoxes, the tilt is at a right angle to the Sun and the light is spread evenly...."

Full article link - click here

Full Credits:

NASA images and animation by Robert Simmon, using data ©2010 EUMETSAT. Caption by Mike Carlowicz.

Instrument:

Meteosat

Related Readings:

1. Stern, D. (2005) From Stargazers to Starships: Seasons of the Year. Accessed September 22, 2011.
2. U.S. Naval Observatory Day and Night Across the Earth. Accessed September 22, 2011.
3. U.S. Naval Oceanographer Earth's Seasons. Accessed September 22, 2011.

Mapping Planetary Rotation in a Binary Star System

This link comes from NASA's Image of the Day and shows how the planetary system might look to a visiting spaceship.



A "Cut and Paste" highlight from the site:


Kepler-16b: A Planet with Two Suns
" Explanation: If you stay up long enough, you can watch both suns set. Such might be a common adage from beings floating in the atmosphere of Kepler 16b, a planet recently discovered by the space-based Kepler satellite. The above animated video shows how the planetary system might look to a visiting spaceship. Although multiple star systems are quite common, this is the first known to have a planet. Because our Earth is in the orbital plane of both stars and the planet, each body is seen to eclipse the others at different times, producing noticeable drop offs in the amount of light seen. The frequent eclipses have given Kepler 16b the most accurate mass and radius determination for a planet outside our Solar System. To find a planet like Saturn in an orbit like Venus -- so close to its binary star parents -- was a surprise and will surely become a focus of research."

Full credits:
APOD NASA Authors & editors: Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP)
NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply.NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices
A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC & Michigan Tech. U.

Illustrated Video Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, T. Pyle; Acknowledgement: djxatlanta

Mapping Adventures - the archeological fantasy locations of Indiana Jones

I will always be an Indiana Jones fan. This movie series was one of those "cultural foundation points" that shaped my younger life. Full credits to Matt Busch for this neat project. Really impressive - this is a complication of not only movie referenced locations, but comic books, video games, the television series and even the theme park references (?!) as well.

Had to post this "best geek-out" video.

Mapping the Future of Space Exploration - Orion

Look forward to the future of space travel - the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

Got Mail? Mapping the Expansion of the Post Office Network (1700-1900)

Posted this one for my brother-in-law, who keeps the US mail moving "rain or shine" (thank you, Juan Carlos).

I recommend pausing the time series for the War of 1812 and the Civil War in 1862. It helped me gain a geographic perspective of our nation's expansion from its colonial beginnings.




Posted: Visualizing US expansion through post offices. from Derek Watkins on Vimeo.
This is a visualization of US expansion in North America from 1700 to 1900, seen through changes in the spatial distribution of post offices.

Data from the USPS Postmaster Finder, with lat/long coordinates extracted from placenames through correlation with the USGS Geographic Names Information System.

Mapping Migration - a Visualization of Inflow & Outflows by Nation

As the election season matures and the Census decennial data slowing "leaks" out, there has been a lot of focus on America's changing demographics.  Below is a neat site that visualizes the migration inflow & outflows by nation.

Here is a screenshot (from peoplemov) of the US migration inflows, interesting how the drop off in count is dramatic after the Mexico-USA corridor is tabulated (oceans will do that to migration...).

"Cut & Paste" Highlights from peoplemovin:

"...the flows of migrants as of 2010 through the use of open data (see Data Sources below).... are presented as a flow chart that shows the connections between countries. The chart is split in two columns, the emigration countries on the left and the destination countries on the right ... [t]he thickness of the lines connecting the countries represents the amount of immigrated people. ..."

This isn't exclusively limited to US data.  The "world's top migration corridor" list makes me "muse" a bit.  It's fascinating where the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are "moving to".

Migration Data:

The World Bank Open Data
Bilateral Migration and Remittances 2010

Refugees and Asylum

Migration and Remittances Factbook 2011

World Population Data

U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base

 

Data Sources - All the presented data are the latest available as of 2010.

peoplemovin is an experimental project in data visualization by Carlo Zapponi. Credits also go to FlowingData for bringing this site to my attention.

Mapping New Nations - South Sudan

While it happens more often than you think, new nations are not "born" every day.  South Sudan has joined the ranks of the world's newest nation, obtaining independence on 9 July 2011. Below are some images and links to the latest references and population of South Sudan.  It should come as no surprise, forming a nation is just the beginning (and no guarantee of permanence).  While I wish the South Sudanese well in their independence, here is a list of former sovereign states (Wikipedia - List of former states)...
CIA Factbook - Listing by Nation:


 
CIA Factobook by Country

Continent/Country Listing - CAI Factbook

CIA Factbook of South Sudan:


CIA Factbook page for South Sudan

South Sudan country page - CIA Factbook



Specific to population cartograms, here is a quick "cut and paste" of a interesting population analysis of the now subdivided region:



"The following gridded population cartogram shows the population distribution within and between these two nations, giving every person living in the region the same amount of space. For the much smaller population in the south it will be hard work ahead in building a new nation.... (Guardian news article - "South Sudan: a nation in the making" )

Sudan Population Cartogram  South Sudan - Views of the World

Full credits to Views of the World for brining this top my attentions. In particular special map creation credit to: The map was created by Benjamin D. Hennig and is property of the Sasi Research Group (University of Sheffield). PhD research project of Benjamin David Hennig, University of Sheffield supervised by Professor Danny Dorling, Dr Mark Ramsden, Dr Dimitris Ballas.



Mapping the night sky - a stunning time lapse series

These are some absolutely stunning night sky compilations put together by Randy Halverson at DakotaLapse.com After watching every video on his site in "near awe", I just had to post these videos and links.



Milky Way preview from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.


These really are so visually stunning, they lead me to rethink the nature of the night sky & why we should always "look up to the heavens" for a different, perhaps more humbling, point of view.


Sub Zero - winter night time-lapse from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.


From his site feed:


" ... During the month of May, I shot Milky Way time-lapse in central South Dakota when I had the time, and the weather cooperated. The biggest challenge was cloudy nights and the wind. There were very few nights, when I could shoot, that were perfectly clear, and often the wind was blowing 25mph +. That made it hard to get the shots I wanted. I kept most of the shots low to the ground, so the wind wouldn’t catch the setup and cause camera shake, or blow it over. I used a Stage Zero Dolly on the dolly shots and a “Milapse” mount on the panning ones.

This was all shot at night. If you see stars and it looks like daylight, it is actually moon light. 20+ second exposures make it look like daylight..."

More at the page link to Plains Milk Way

Mapping Ice - Arctic and Antarctic Ice Depths

Recently the European Space Agency posted imagery of sea-ice thickness from ESA’s CryoSat mission to both poles of the earth. Here is a link to a nice time series image of ice loss over three decades: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cryosat/SEMQK4908BE_1.html 

From their site:
" ...CryoSat measures the height of the sea ice above the water line, known as the freeboard, to calculate the thickness. The measurements used to generate this first map of the Arctic were from January and February 2011, as the ice approaches its annual maximum.."

"... For the first time, data from ESA’s CryoSat mission have been used

to map the height of the ice sheet that blankets Antarctica. The preliminary data used here are from February and March 2011... CryoSat's ability to map the edges of the ice sheet is demonstrated by the detail that can be seen of the flow from east Antarctica onto the Ronne-Filchner ice shelf in the west. ... [t]he outer white circle represents the limits of earlier missions and the inner circle shows that CryoSat is collecting data up 88° latitude..."

Full credit to the Map Room for bringing this to my attention.

Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic maps - When Depictions of Life intersects Location

Neat blog post on Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic maps. Credits to The Map Room and Donna Seger's The Streets of Salem of bringing this to my attention.


From her post " ... The shift from conceptual to more realistic cartography in the early modern era is a very evident and important trend, but early modern mapmakers retained a bit of whimsy when they produced maps in the form of plants, animals and humans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries...."

 German theology professor Heinrich Bunting’s Travels according to the Scriptures (1581): 

Specific to this image, " ...Another lively early modern map is the “Dutch Lion” map (Leo Belgicus, Leo Hollandicus ) issued in a succession of variations from the late sixteenth century, contemporaneously with the Dutch Revolt against Spain. The rebellious Dutch provinces are shown in the form of a lion, roaring in the face of the powerful Spanish Empire...."

"Leo Hollandicus", JC Visscher, 1648