.Astronomy Day 4: Eye candy December 7, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, dotastronomy . 2comments
Day 4 at .Astronomy was all about visualisation. Astronomy is arguably the most naturally photogenic of the sciences, even though we don’t know what much of the stuff out there actually is. As technological advances enable wider, deeper, higher-resolution observations, astronomical data become increasingly complex. But data is not knowledge, and the information we can extract from these large multi-dimensional datasets is limited by our ability to visualise and mentally process this complexity. Unfortunately, PhDs don’t give us extra powers over everyone else. Our minds are wired the same as everyone else’s – we just learn how to manipulate data and present them in novel ways that make them make sense to our limited brain.
Mobile sky mapping May 17, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, science . 1 comment so farGoogle have just released a fab new application for their Android phones, called Sky Map. When you point your phone at the sky, Sky Map can automatically load a map of the bit you’re looking at. Or if you’re looking for Mars, it can actually direct you to it on the sky, in a very cool “icy-cooler-bit warmer now-warm-hot-scorching-yes you’ve got it!”-stylee.
One of the main developers on the project is a software engineer who used to work on AstroGrid, John Taylor (h/t to Andy for flagging that up). Check out the video below from the application launch at the recent Google Searchology event (the sleek promo video is here).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD5lVvbvCUs]
