Today’s MOTD comes to us from Emmet Meyer III at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, LA. This infographic shows the cementing of the the Deepwater Horizon’s oil well and the possible cause of the disaster.
June 1, 2010
Map O’ The Day #190 - Deepwater Horizon’s Cementing
July 7, 2009
Map O’ The Day #108 - Science Processes
Today’s MOTD comes to us from Ars Technica and is a scientific process model. According to the graphic there are four areas of the scientific process, Exploration and Discovery, Testing Ideas, Benefits and Outcomes and Community Analysis and Feedback.
The information flow arrows work very well to show all of the pathways and loops that are associated with the system. The simplicity, layout and color scheme of the design also makes it very pleasing to the eye.
May 22, 2009
Map O’ The Day #77 - World GHG Emissions Flow Chart
Today’s MOTD is a personal favorite from the World Research Institute. It shows three vertical lanes of information creating one continuous and easy to understand flow chart.
May 4, 2009
Map O’ The Day #61 - Ice Age
Today’s MOTD is a powerful example of showing change by comparison over time without utilizing a traditional timeline or graph. This map charts the median age of ice gathered every February from 1981 to January 2009 and compares the data to the median age and amount of ice in February 2009.
Many different conclusions can be made about why the ice is melting, but one cant deny that simply by the authors use of a single color, they captured a dramatic visual discrepancy.
November 7, 2008
Map O’ The Day #14 - Moonwalk
On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the moon. He didn’t moonwalk alone – ‘Buzz’ Aldrin joined him on the surface – and he didn’t walk far. After traveling hundreds of thousands of kilometers, the landing crew of the Apollo 11 lunar mission barely covered an area the size of a football throw.
November 3, 2008
Map O’ The Day #11 - The Dark Side Of The Moon
This map is of the dark side of the moon, which here looks more like a Jackson Pollock action painting, its riotous colours corresponding to geological materials and phenomena. Many of the colour spots are circular in nature, reflecting the large number of meteorites that have impacted on the lunar surface, unprotected by an atmosphere, over many, many centuries.
The map is one of a series produced by NASA and the US Geological Survey between 1971 and 1998.
October 30, 2008
Map O’ The Day #9 - UFO Hotspot Maps
Yes, that’s right a map about where the crazies live. That said, it troubles me there’s a big red dot on my hometown, Pittsburgh, PA.
Alien encounters, abductions and sightings are very much out of the picture since they were milked for televisual success by the popular series The X-Files in the 1990s. This diminution of media coverage for UFOs and suchlike could of course be part of the very elaborate cover-up by the US government, which obviously has to be in cahoots with the more ominous races of aliens currently running the show in Area 51.
That doesn’t prevent the brave J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies from Chicago from publishing a map of UFO sightings in the US. It indicates the number of UFO reports per 100.000 people by county in the continental US. Some observations:
- There is a marked difference in levels of UFO visitation between the eastern and western halves of the continental US. Apparently, extraterrestrials like it out west. Marked exceptions to this rule is a hotspot in northern Minnesota, several others spread out mainly in Missouri and Illinois and a small area in the Florida panhandle.
- Aliens like the west, but generally don’t care for Dixie: the south is remarkably UFO-free.
- Preferred landing spots of UFOs are concentrated in the states of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, the three coastal states and Nevada – with a spike around, of course, Area 51.
October 28, 2008
Map O’ The Day #7 - Solar Eclipse Map
If you want to witness a total solar eclipse and you live in Europe, you’re out of luck until at least 2026. Unless you live in one of a few of Europe’s geographical extremities (i.e. the Faeroe Islands, Spitsbergen, Nova Zembla, Abkhazia and other parts of eastern Georgia or the southern part of Russia), the astronomical phenomenon will pass you by.
North Americans are in a bit more luck: on August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will culminate in the sky close to Memphis, Tennessee. And on April 8, 2024, an eclipse will be visible in a band stretching from Maine to Mexico.
South America will have three solar eclipses. On July 11, 2010 and again on July 2, 2019, eclipses will be visible across two different bands of Chile and Argentina. The third one will culminate over Patagonia on December 14, 2020. Oh, and there is a small strip of Brazil that witnessed the very beginning of an eclipse culminating faraway over the Libyan-Chadian border on March 29, 2006. Apart from that previous one, Africa witnessed two more eclipses, both over the southern part of the continent, in 2001 and 2002. But none until at least 2026. Small areas in Australia’s Northern Territory and the state of Queensland will observe an eclipse on November 13, 2012.
In Asia, bands of darkness will travel across Indonesia on March 9, 2016, China, India, Eastern Nepal, Northern Bangladesh and the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on July 2009 and China, Mongolia, the eastern tip of Kazakhstan and Siberia on August 8, 2008. That last one will culminate near the lands where the aboriginal Nenets tribe live. If you’re their shaman, you might want to note that date in your diary, and prepare a good speech.
Total solar eclipses occur when the Moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, obscuring the sunlight and leaving visible only a much fainter corona. This ´totality´is only ever visible in a narrow bands of the Earth´s surface, as this map demonstrates. Interestingly, the shape of those bands bends with their relative position on the map - from slight curves close to the equator to almost circular nearer the pole.
Don´t think that the Sun (and Moon) behave differently over different parts of the globe: it´s the globe that gets distorted when it gets stretched out over a flat map surface, especially over the polar areas.