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

Chicago in 3-D

Mapping Oil Production - More Crude than you think

Found this via the Map Room with credits to Market Place (research by Adam Popescu).

Quick Cut & Paste:
" .... On the one-year anniversary of the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, we take a look at the future of crude as we enter an era of "tough oil." This interactive map - and our coverage below - examines how world crude oil production has shifted over the years, particularly from 1960 to 2010, as oil producers search for new locations and methods for extracting oil...."

Full article & interactive map - click here.

Mapping your LinkedIn Network

Neat way to understand your porfessional "spheres of connection".
From LinkedIn Labs  - InMaps - Visualize your LinkedIn network.

Mapping Android Usage - Activations by Continent

Interesting given all the recent press around "Apple-nation" - never count "the 'Droid" out.
Still no GSM for Apple iPhone on Verizon (aarrgghh).
Credits to FlowingData for bringing this to my attention.

Mapping Units of Measure -Size is relative in the Universe

Size is "relative" in the universe.



From the NASA APOD Project:
Star Size Comparisons



Credit & Copyright: morn1415 (YouTube)


Explanation: How big is our Sun compared to other stars? In a dramatic and popular video featured on YouTube, the relative sizes of planets and stars are shown from smallest to largest. The above video starts with Earth's Moon and progresses through increasingly larger planets in our Solar System. Next, the Sun is shown along as compared to many of the brighter stars in our neighborhood of the Milky Way Galaxy. Finally, some of the largest stars known spin into view. Note that the true sizes of most stars outside of the Sun and Betelgeuse are not known by direct observation, but rather inferred by measurements of their perceived brightness, temperature, and distance. Although an inspiring learning tool that is mostly accurate, APOD readers are encouraged to complete the learning experience -- and possibly help make future versions more accurate -- by pointing out slight inaccuracies in the video.

Mapping the International Space Station (ISS): A timeline visualization of construction

This is a nice timeline visualization from USA Today on the "evolution of construction" for the International Space Station (ISS) - beginning in 1998 thru 2010.

USA Today ISS timeline

The Alteryx Grand Prix - a video at Las Vegas Speedway