Asteroid Discovery Visualization

This is a great visualization of all of the asteroids discovered between 1980 and 2011. I’m linking to it instead of embedding it because you’re going to want to go play it at really high resolution.

The basic idea is that as time passes, you see the planets and asteroids orbiting the sun. As new asteroids are discovered, you see them flash white and then fade into a color which codes for the type of asteroid. The resulting visualization is easy to understand, but still contains  a lot of information. For example, you can see:

• How the rate of discovery increases as technology improves.
• How the discoveries track the position of the earth.
• How different technologies were good at detecting different types of asteroids or asteroids in different directions.

Go check it out here, or check out some of Scott Manley’s other cool stuff at his home page.