Confession — I’m a major space cadet! I mean this in an older, positive sense of the word, which is that I’m a “space enthusiast.”
That’s why I really get into updating the pages on Cosma having to do with space.
Things got a little out of hand this time, though.
I began just like I always do, updating the Mars page, because that’s my favorite one.
Poking around YouTube, looking for new ideas, turned up this 360° video taken by NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover. It is a 2.4 billion-pixel panorama of the Van Zyl Overlook.
Note: This is a 360° Video — press and hold to explore it!
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)
Better yet, there’s an interactive version online that’s even more impressive.
I also found an entire YouTube Playlist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory with more than twenty 360° panorama videos of Mars.
Let’s just say all of that exploring Mars took … a few minutes.
Then I came across this YouTube video about something called Eyes on the Solar System from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that renders scientifically accurate views of the planets and spacecraft from their missions.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (YouTube Channel)
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Official Website)
That video had me at space buff, arm-chair astronaut and 3D, but it was outdated.
It turns out that there is no need to download anything anymore — there’s a newer version of Eyes on the Solar System that is entirely online.
I scrounged around YouTube and found this longer video about a more recent version of Eyes on the Solar System. This video explains that it is actually part of a larger suite of apps called NASA’s Eyes that includes Eyes on Asteroids, Eyes on Earth, Eyes on Exoplanets and Mars 2020.
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (YouTube Channel)
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (Official Website)
Okay, neat! Watching that video, and then playing around with all of it (particuarly the Mars area of Eyes on the Solar System and Mars 2020) didn’t take “much” time at all 😉
I was only a “little” behind schedule.
Then I just had to spend a “little more time” playing around with cool things from NASA/JPL (Experience Insight, Experience Curiosity and Explore with Curiosity). There’s more about them and links to them on Cosma’s Mars page along with some other fun stuff.
One problem. I spent all that time on the Mars page, but I hadn’t even touched all of those other pages about space.
Time to get back to work …
… but it wasn’t long before things went awry.
I came across a NASA website called Solar System Treks. It allows you to visualize, explore, and analyze the surfaces of other planets, moons and astroids using real data. You can view the worlds through the eyes of many different instruments, pilot real-time 3D flyovers above mountains and into craters. Here’s a video about it.
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (YouTube Channel)
NASA Scientific Visualization Studio (Official Website)
The web site opens with a tutorial that takes a few minutes to do, but it is worth it. Of course, I just had to play with that to make sure it worked, right?
So now this was well past when I thought I would have been long done with updating the space related pages on Cosma, but I did eventually get all the way to updating the top Universe page.
While doing research for that, I tripped over the Hubble Skymap (NASA), WorldWide Telescope (American Astronomical Society), and ViewSpace: Discover the Universe Interactives (Space Telescope Science Institute).
Oh noooo …
All in all, updating the space pages ended up taking ten times longer than I had planned.
So there you have it. I spent the better part of this last week being a real space cadet!
The good news is that I put descriptions and links to all the fun stuff that I found on the pages as I updated them, so you can find them and spend a time becoming a space cadet, too.
You can use this Toy World called Solar Extremes to get started accessing the updated pages as well as a few other fun experiences.
You can also view this Toy World on Kuula.
You can also choose your own adventure by clicking on the links below.
Happy Space Cadeting!
“Space”
Universe (Astronomical Instrument)
Galaxy Milky Way, Andromeda
Planetary System Star, Brown Dwarf, Planet, Moon
Our Neighborhood
Solar System Sun
Terrestrial Planet Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars
Asteroid Belt Ceres, Vesta
Jovian Planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Trans-Neptunian Object
Kuiper Belt Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
Scattered Disc Eris, Sedna, Planet X
Oort Cloud Etc. Scholz’s Star
Small Body Comet, Centaur, Asteroid
p.s. I confess that I can be a space cadet in the other sense of the word too. I accidentally “re-posted” TRAPPIST-1 a few days ago. If you subscribe to the Cosma blog, then you probably saw it in your email. However, I have trouble feeling bad about it, because the post is an oldie, but goodie. There’s a companion post called Exoplanet Junket still worth a gander.
