Stoned Malone| Hey! What Are You Looking At?
Hey! What Are You Looking At?
Astronomia
Summary
In our project, we plan to develop a web application to provide a visualization of data in the form of pictures. A map of the earth will be given on the website. Clicking on any part will retrieve the coordinates of the location clicked and provide a visualization of part of the sky in any wavelength. Besides that, using the coordinates chosen a list of observable objects will be displayed, along with the times of the year it is visible at the coordinates given.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Our project is a web-based application that allows users from all walks of life to access a visualization tool for any purpose — either from casually curious to as an academic aid. Since it is a web-based application, it does not require any applications and can be accessed from any device, as long as the user has a working internet connection and an internet browser. We believe that our project is important as it compiles all otherwise technical knowledge in a single easy-to-use application. Using a map to obtain coordinates which can be used with simple point and click gestures, any space enthusiast will be able to navigate through this application easily to obtain information about astronomy.
Our project aims to provide a simple and user-friendly tool to provide information in the most engaging way possible. Usually, details about astronomy are bogged down by many technical terms and require a level of technical knowledge to be understood and users are not engaged to continue learning and exploring. Astronomia aims to allow users to be fascinated by the wonders of space using visual aids and an easy-to-use interface, to allow any person to continue learning about the great vast space above us.
How We Developed This Project
The inspiration behind this project was to provide users who are interested, the ability to visualize cosmic phenomena from HEASARC missions of studying electromagnetic radiation from extremely energetic cosmic phenomena. The visualization tool that we created is for novice users who do not have any astronomical knowledge. The development of this project was approached in a way where the data from the data resources were incorporated upon the website. The website shall be able to provide users the ability to manipulate the variables of coordinates, the sun’s angle, type of sun, wavelengths and the time date of the occurences. With these capabilities, our website provides an image using colour intensity to distinguish the frequency of electromagnetic radiation from extremely energetic cosmic phenomena. The programming language we chose was HTML and CSS. As for the technologies, Atom and personal laptops were involved in the development of this project. Along the project development, we were faced by many unanticipated problems which were mainly the complex domain knowledge of astronomical jargons and data integration from data resources. Nevertheless, we have developed the structure and design of the website.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
In our project, we used resources provided by NASA to provide an engaging experience for the user by displaying images of the sky at different wavelengths at the coordinates chosen by the user. To do this, we used the SkyView visualization interface as a virtual telescope at any given coordinates.