TKS LA/OC| Hey! What Are You Looking At?
Hey! What Are You Looking At?
HEAT (High-Energy Astrophysics Telemetry) Viewer
Summary
There are thousands of databases and catalogs with data on high-energy cosmic phenomena such as gravitational wave detections, gamma-ray bursts, and supernovae. These massive amounts of data are compiled in catalogs and databases that are not user-friendly. We aim to provide amateurs and experts alike with an intuitive and easy-to-use interface to search for and understand the labyrinth of coordinates and acronyms involved with these amazing phenomena.
How We Addressed This Challenge
HEAT Viewer is an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand web tool built with user interface and user experience in mind. We combined the information-focused open source code of multiple cosmic activity databases with original code to produce a straightforward representation of the locations and types of extremely energetic cosmic events.
Many space enthusiasts and aspiring astrophysicists, especially in the younger generation, seek the mountains of information collected over decades of data collection by government-sponsored space agencies like NASA. But this wealth of information is not accessible to those without a strong background in the field of astrophysics or computer science as the data is often stored in complicated and confusing online databases.
HEAT Viewer provides a solution to this problem.
Users can easily access the following information:
- a simple digital representation of the celestial sphere
- views of the universe through a variety of wavelengths (gamma ray, x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, radio)
- an array of information including the celestial coordinates, galaxy, and type of thousands upon thousands of high-energy cosmic phenomena from multiple catalogs
- a timeline scroller to see the chronology of the cosmic events
This platform combines an existing open source platform called Aladin with the massive amounts of data stored in the databases B/sn/sncat and IX/51/table2 with original HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to allow the general public to access the data collected on cosmic activity.
We hope to provide those who are interested in space and astrophysics a platform to access all the information that is available to them without the complex and convoluted processes necessary to fetch this information in the past.
How We Developed This Project
Our team chose this challenge for the massive potential we saw in it. Countless interesting things occur out there in the universe and what it holds is just so fascinating but we can't see them with the naked eye. With most people living in highly light-polluted areas, they aren't able to see the mysteries that which the night universe holds. We want to provide people around the globe with an easy and simple platform to access the wonders of the heavens.
Our approach to developing this project at first was a little rough at the start with having no true direction to go to but we pulled through and found a pre-existing interactive platform called Aladin we could use to build our application upon. We used basic coding languages to develop this project: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Our team, consisting of all freshmen (grade 9), sophomores (grade 10), and juniors (grade 11) in high school, did not have a very strong background in coding. The outcome seemed gloomy at first, but through relentless self-learning and research, we managed to put together something we are proud to call our first ever hackathon project!
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used space agency data from these two databases: B/sn/sncat and IX/51/table2. This space agency data was used to add the coordinates and other information of the celestial phenomena. This was a major part of our project separating the difference between other projects informing the user of the countless celestial phenomena that occurs in the universe.
In addition to NASA, we also used data from ESA (European Space Agency). The information we compiled influenced our project because it allowed up to organize them in a way that is both informative and intuitive.
Project Code
Data & Resources
- Interactive interface Aladin Lite
- Databases B/sn/sncat and IX/51/table2 maintained by the Universite de Strasbourg