Eyes on Asteroids

[bigmasterdrago]

NASA’s new ‘Eyes on Asteroids’ Reveals Our Near-Earth Object Neighborhood.
Cool tool to play with.


https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-eyes...ighborhood

[ledge1962]

Thanks BMD. It is a really cool tool. That Apophis is a bit of a worry when you watch the trails.

[bigmasterdrago]

One of the things I just noticed is that when sitting mostly idle, the CPU usage is 30-40% in Firefox. No other tabs open and no active other software open. Seems a bit high. Had another report where a user noticed that it was using almost 100% CPU when it's just sitting there doing nothing, so there's a problem there that they need to sort out.

[ledge1962]

I imagine there would be some pretty amazing calculations going on in the program in Live view.

[PMSchu]

Hi BMD,

This is a cool visualization, thanks. Did you notice the string of objects that all seem to be following each other in the same orbit? They're currently near the label for 16 Psyche. They're really noticable if you speed up the time rate - they look like they're chasing each other around the orbit. I sent a message to the folks at JPL asking what they are. Might they be the remains of an old comet that broke up? The orbit looks cometary - high eccentricity.

CPU usage isn't more than ~4% in the Edge browser. Haven't tried Firefox.

Phil S.

[ledge1962]

Hi Phil. I did run it at speed and it does seem to have a pattern. Are you going to post their answer here?

[PMSchu]

Hi George,

I used their Feedback function to congratulate them on the new website & ask the question about those objects. Unfortunately, they claim that they don't normally respond to Feedback due to the high volume of communications.

If they do reply, I'll post their response here.

Yes, the effect is really noticable when the time rate is increased. It looks like a toy train going around a track to me.

Did you observe high CPU usage on your system when running Eyes on Asteroids?

Phil S.

[razvan]

Phil, that's a very cool find. I hope you hear back from JPL. Do you happen to know why those fragments are visualized in white (whereas most asteroids are in blue)? I don't see any legend displayed when I look at the site. I've marked them in the image, just to be sure we're talking about the same thing.

Thanks,
Razvan

   

[PMSchu]

Hi razvan,

I think those are the objects I was referring to, but in my display they were in the upper left quadrant near (16) Psyche. Have you changed the orientation of the map? When you speed up the passage of time, they're really noticable as they chase each other around the orbit.

I've no idea how the colors are chosen. Also wish that the planets were shown more clearly, but still a cool website.

Phil S.

[PMSchu]

I reversed the time direction & rewound back to 2006 Jan & all of these objects seemed to clump together as shown here: 
[attachment=2152]

If you continue to run the time backwards, they separate again. The time goes back to 1989 & they continue to follow each other around. If the white color indicates anything, perhaps they're large. They sure seem to be related to each other.

Phil S.