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Audio Videos

Exoplanets: visual summaries

Here is a NASA application called Eyes on Exoplanets that allows you to explore the exoplanet database, including all the Kepler discoveries. (Requires a download and install to run.)

Here is a beautiful visual summary by astrophysicist Alex Parker of over 2,000 high-quality planet candidates identified by the Kepler Space Telescope, visualized as if they are orbiting a common parent star. This gives you a sense of the wide diversity in size and orbital characteristics.

Categories
Audio Videos

Painted Stone: asteroids and asteroid mining

Painted Stone, a piece by composer/astrophysicist Alex Parker. This shows 100,000 asteroids identified by the Sloan Digital Sky survey. (In Fall 2016, the number is now up to 200,000.) The so-called Trojan asteroids that lead, and lag, Jupiter by 60 degrees on its orbit are clearly visible once you get to see the whole collection of objects.

Why is this important? The asteroids might be a source of resources, and a way to fuel our exploration of space. Here’s a short video by the company Planetary Resources, which is hoping to commercialize asteroid mining. (No endorsement is implied here. The following is just a good short video explaining the ‘why’ of asteroid mining.)