Tag Archives: Software

NASA’s Eyes – Part 1: Eyes on the Solar System

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This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series NASA's Eyes

With NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System, you can learn about the Earth, the solar system and beyond! You can fly alongside current spacecraft, take guided tours of historic space missions, travel to the planets, their moons, comets and asteroids. You can visualize and animate Earth climate data, and take virtual tours of exoplanets that have been discovered orbiting other stars! NASA’s Eyes is FREE for Windows and MAC, and is great for use in the classroom or at home! I use Eyes every week to create images for my “In the Sky” posts; in this post, I’ll cover the Eyes on the Solar System module of the Eyes app. When you launch the Eyes client app, you are presented with a splash screen showing the three Eyes modules; Eyes on the Solar System (middle) has two buttons: simple and advanced mode. Simple mode presents you with a very minimal user interface, and enters into a Kiosk-mode after a few … Continue reading →

Space Visualization Software

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“Where do you get all those cool images from?” I was asked this after one of my lectures. When I create a lecture, I always include a LOT of images; I get many of these from various space mission websites. Occasionally, I am unable to find exactly the image I want, or wish to convey a concept that I cannot find an image for. When this happens, I create my own! There are several computer apps that allow you to visualize objects in space in a number of different ways, including: See the current position of the planets in the solar system. Go to a current NASA spacecraft, and see what they’re doing. View the solar system from any planet or moon. See the sky from the surface of the Earth at any time in the past or future. Lob an asteroid at the Earth, and see what happens. Send a star hurtling through the solar system, and see what … Continue reading →