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An Exoplanet Web Site, Powered by Google Earth's New API
January 22, 2009
[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Stephen Savage join us here.]
Have you ever wondered about planets orbiting stars that are outside our solar system? They are called “exoplanets” and more than 300 have been discovered by astronomers worldwide since the late 1990s. You can now explore these “strange new worlds" using
Google Earth's API
.
The web site uses the API to place icons in Sky View. Visitors can fly around the universe and click on the icons to get information about exoplanets drawn from the Extrasolar Planets Encyclopedia, Wikipedia, and other sources. Information includes pictures of the parent star, the estimated planetary orbit, and artist’s interpretations of the planet’s appearance based on known data. Tabular information about the exoplanet and its star, and detailed descriptions and references are also included. There are extensive discussions about Exoplanet Typology, the Habitable Zone (where we might find “new life, and new civilizations”) and Stellar Typology, drawn from Wikipedia and published scientific articles. Each is fully documented with references and citations. And the JavaScript that powers the site is transparent, so visitors who want to build their own web sites with the Google Earth API can see how it’s done.
To make the page more fun, it’s built around the “Astrometrics Console” from the Star Trek: Voyager series, and works by using the buttons and controls on the console. Visitors can hear “7 of 9” and scan for Borg cubes in Sector 001, watch briefings and experience the world of Star Trek: Voyager but with real exoplanetary data, so learning is fun. You might even see Jordan’s King Abdullah II in a cameo role on one of the briefing records. So, “Engage!” and "beam over" to
http://gaialab.asu.edu/exoplanets
and “see what’s out there!”
Posted by
Stephen H. Savage: Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab, Archaeological Research Institute, Arizona State University
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